BOOKIE SKARVAN, alias the fat man in the taxicab who chewed on the butt of his cigar, leaned back in his seat, and nibbed his pudgy hands together in a sort of gratified self-applause.
“Baggage and all,” repeated Bookie Skarvan to himself. “I guess that's good enough—what? I guess that's where she's going to hang out, all right. And I guess the place looks the part! The Iron Tavern—eh?” He read the window sign, as his taxi rolled by. “Well, leave it to Bookie! I guess I'll blow back there by-and-by and register—if the rates ain't too high! But there ain't no hurry! I've been sticking around now for five years, and I guess I can take a few minutes longer just to make sure the numbers go up right on the board this time!”
Bookie Skarvan, with the adroit assistance of his tongue, shifted the cigar butt to the other corner of his mouth. He expectorated on the floor of the taxi—and suddenly frowned uneasily. He had had uneasy moments more than once on his late trip across the continent, but they were due, not so much to the fear that anything was wrong with his “dope-sheet,” as they were to the element of superstition which was inherent in him as a gambler—so far he had not had any luck with that hundred thousand dollars, in the theft of which he had been forestalled by Dave Henderson five years ago. That was what was the matter. He was leery of his luck.
He chewed savagely. He had an attack of that superstition now—but at least he knew the panacea to be employed. At times such as these he communed and reasoned patiently with himself. He communed with himself now.
“Sure, she knows where the money is! She's the dark horse, and the long shot—and I got the tip and the inside dope, ain't I? Sure, she's the play!” he reassured himself. “She hustled that funeral along something fierce. And she went tearing around like a wet hen raising money, letting things go and grabbing at any old price until she'd got enough to see her through, and then she suddenly locks the house up and beats it like hell. 'Twasn't natural, was it? She was in some hurry—believe me! What did she do it for—eh? Well, I'll tell you, Bookie—on the quiet. What Nicolo Capriano knew, she knew. And Nicolo Capriano wasn't the bird to let one hundred thousand dollars get as close to his claws as it did without him taking a crack at it. If you ask me, Nicolo pulled Dave Henderson's leg for the dope; and if you ask me, Nicolo was the guy who handed out that bomb, and he did it to bump Dave Henderson off—same as I figured to do once—and cop the loot for himself. Mabbe I'm wrong—but I guess I'm not. And I guess the odds weren't too rotten to stake a ride on across the country, I guess they weren't!”
Bookie lifted a fat hand, pushed back his hat, and scratched ruminatively at the hair over his right temple.
“Dave must have had a pal, or he must have slipped it to some one that time Baldy chased him in the car. It must have been that—he slipped it to some one during them days the bulls was chasing him, and whoever it was mabbe has been keeping it for him here in New York. So she beats it for New York—what? It don't figure out any other way. He didn't go nowhere and get it after he got out of prison, I know that. And he got killed the same night, and he didn't have it then. Sure, Capriano bumped him off! Sure, my hunch is good for the limit! Dave fell for the Lomazzi talk, and goes and puts his head on Nicolo's bosom so's to give the police the go-by, and Nicolo sucks the orange dry and heaves away the pip! And then the old geezer cashes in himself, and the girl flies the coop. Mabbe she don't know nothing about it”—Bookie Skarvan stuck his tongue in his cheek, and grinned ironically—“oh, no, mabbe she don't! And I guess there ain't any family resemblance between the old man and the girl, neither—eh?—oh, no, mabbe not!”
The taxi stopped abruptly. The chauffeur reached around and dexterously opened the door.
“Here you are!” he announced briefly.
Bookie Skarvan looked out—upon a very shabby perspective. With the sole exception of a frankly dirty and disreputable saloon, designated as “O'Shea's,” which faced him across the sidewalk, the neighborhood appeared to consist of nothing but Chinese tea-shops, laundries, restaurants, and the like; while the whole street, gloomy and ill-lighted, was strewn with unprepossessing basement entrances where one descended directly from the sidewalk to the cellar level below.
Bookie Skarvan picked up his hand-bag, descended to the sidewalk, paid and dismissed the chauffeur, and pushed his way in through the swinging doors of the saloon.
“I guess I ain't drinking—not here!” confided Bookie Skarvan to himself, as he surveyed the unkempt, sawdust-strewn floor and dirty furnishings, and a group of equally unkempt and hard-looking loungers that lined the near end of the bar. “No, I guess not,” said Bookie to himself; “but I guess it's the place, all right.”
He made his way to the unoccupied end of the bar. The single barkeeper that the place evidently boasted disengaged himself from the group of loungers, and approached Bookie Skarvan.
“Wot's yours?” he inquired indifferently.
Bookie Skarvan leaned confidentially over the rail, “I'm looking for a gentleman by the name of Smeeks,” he said, and his left eyelid drooped, “Cunny Smeeks.”
The barkeeper's restless black eyes, out of an unamiable and unshaven face, appraised Bookie Skarvan, and Bookie Skarvan's well-to-do appearance furtively.
“It's a new one on me!” he observed blandly. “Never heard of him!”
Bookie Skarvan shifted his cigar butt—with his tongue.
“That's too bad!” he said—and leaned a little further over the bar. “I've come a long way to see him. I'm a stranger here, and mabbe I've got the wrong place. Mabbe I've got the wrong name too”—Bookie Skarvan's left eyelid twitched again—“mabbe you'd know him better as the Scorpion?”
“Mabbe I would—if I knew him at all,” said the barkeeper non-committally. “Wot's your lay? Fly-cop?”
“You're talking now!” said Bookie Skarvan, with a grin. He pulled a letter from his pocket, and pushed it across the bar. “You can let the Scorpion figure out for himself how much of a fly-cop I am when he gets his lamps on that. And it's kind of important! Get me—friend?”
The barkeeper picked up the plain, sealed envelope—and twirled it meditatively in his hands for a moment, while his eyes again searched Bookie Skarvan's face.
“Youse seem to know yer way about!” he admitted finally, as though not unfavorably impressed by this later inspection.
Bookie Skarvan shoved a cigar across the bar.
“It's straight goods, colonel,” he said. “I'm all the way from 'Frisco, and everything's on the level. I didn't blow in here on a guess. Start the letter on its way, and let the Scorpion call the turn. If he don't want to see me, he don't have to. See?”
“All right!” said the barkeeper abruptly. “But I'm tellin' youse straight I ain't seen him to-night, an' I ain't sayin' he's to be found, or that he's stickin' around here anywhere.”
“I'll wait,” said Bookie Skarvan pleasantly.
The barkeeper walked down the length of the bar, disappeared through a door at the rear for a moment, and, returning, rejoined the group at the upper end of the room.
Bookie Skarvan waited.
Perhaps five minutes passed. The door at the rear of the bar opened slightly, the barkeeper sauntered down in that direction, and an instant later nodded his head over his shoulder to Bookie Skarvan, motioning him to come around the end of the bar.
“Cunny'll see youse,” he announced, stepping aside from the doorway to allow Bookie Skarvan to pass. “De Chink'll show youse de way.” He grinned suddenly. “I guess youse are on de level all right, or youse wouldn't be goin' where youse are!”
The door closed behind him, and Bookie Skarvan found himself in a narrow, dimly-lighted passage. A small, wizened Chinaman, in a white blouse, standing in front of him, smiled blandly.
“You fliend of Scorpy's—that allee same belly glood. You come,” invited the man, and scuffled off along the had.
Bookie Skarvan followed—and smiled to himself in complacent satisfaction. Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, was, if surroundings were any criterion, living up to his reputation—which was a not insignificant item on Bookie Skarvan's “dope-sheet”—as one of the “safest,” as well as one of the most powerful criminal leaders in the underworld of New York.
“Sure!” said Bookie Skarvan to himself. “That's the way I got the dope—and it's right!”
The passage swerved suddenly, and became almost black. Bookie Skarvan could just barely make out the flutter of the white blouse in front of him. And then the guide's voice floated back:
“Allee same stlairs here—you look out!”
Cautioned, Bookie Skarvan descended a steep flight of stairs warily into what was obviously, though it was too dark to see, a cellar. Ahead of him, however, there appeared, as through an opening of some sort, a faint glow of light again, and toward this the white blouse fluttered its way. And then Bookie Skarvan found himself in another passage; and a strange, sweetish odor came to his nostrils; and strange sounds, subdued whisperings, rustlings, the dull ring of metal like coin thrown upon a table, reached his ears. And there seemed to be doors now on either side, and curtained hangings, and it was soft and silent underfoot.
“I dunno,” observed Bookie Skarvan to himself. “I dunno—it ain't got much on 'Frisco, at that!”
The guide halted, and opened a door. A soft, mellow light shone out. Bookie Skarvan smiled knowingly. He was not altogether unsophisticated! A group of richly dressed Chinamen were absorbed in cards. Scarcely one of them looked up. Bookie Skarvan's eyes passed over the group almost contemptuously, and fixed on the only man in the room who was not playing, and, likewise, the only man present who was not an Oriental, and who, with hands in his pockets, and slouch hat pushed back from his forehead, stood watching the game—a man who was abnormally short in stature, and enormously broad in shoulder, who had hair of a violently aggressive red, and whose eyes, as he turned now to look toward the door, were of a blue so faded as to make them unpleasantly colorless.
Bookie Skarvan remained tentatively on the threshold. He needed no further introduction—no one to whom the man had been previously described could mistake Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion.
The other came quickly forward now with outstretched hand.
“Any friend of Baldy Vickers is a friend of mine,” he said heartily. “You want to see me—-eh? Well, come along, cull, where we can talk.”
He led the way a little further down the passage, and into another room, and closed the door. The furnishings here were meager, and evidently restricted entirely to the votaries of poppy. There was a couch, and beside it a small tabouret for the opium smoker's paraphernalia.
The Scorpion pointed to the couch; and possessed himself of the tabouret, which he straddled.
“Sit down,” he invited. “Have a drink?”
“No,” said Bookie Skarvan. “Thanks just the same. I guess I won't take anything to-night.” He grinned significantly. “I'm likely to be busy.”
The Scorpion nodded.
“Sure—all right!” he agreed. “Well, we'll get to cases, then. Baldy says in his letter that you and him are in on a deal, and that you may want a card or two slipped you to fill your hand. What's the lay, and what can I do for you?”
“It's a bit of a long story.” Bookie Skarvan removed the cigar butt from his lips, eyed it contemplatively for a moment, finally flung it away, fished another cigar from his pocket, and, without lighting it, settled it firmly between his back teeth. “I got to be fair with you,” he said. “Baldy said he handed it to you straight in the letter, but I got to make sure you understand. We think we got a good thing, and, if it is, anything you do ain't going for nothing; but there's always the chance that it's a bubble, and that there's a hole gets kicked in it.”
“That's all right!” said Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, easily. “If there's anything coming I'll get mine—and I'm satisfied with any division that Baldy puts across. Baldy and me know each other pretty well. You can forget all that end of it—Baldy's the whitest boy I ever met, and what Baldy says goes with me all the way. Go ahead with the story—spill it!”
“The details don't count with you,” said Bookie Skarvan slowly; “and there's no use gumming up the time with them. The bet is that a nice, sweet, little Italian girl, that's just piked faster'n hell across the continent, knows where there's a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash, that was pinched and hidden five years ago by a fellow named Dave Henderson—see? Dave served his spaces, and got out a few days ago—and croaked—got blown up with a Dago bomb—get me? He didn't have no time to enjoy his wealth—kind of tough, eh? Well he stood in with this Italian girl's father, an old crook named Nicolo Capriano, and he went there the night he got out of prison. The way we got it doped out is that the old Italian, after getting next to where the money was, bumped off Dave Henderson himself—see? Then Nicolo dies of heart disease, and the girl hardly waits to bury the old man decently, and beats it for here—me trailing her on the same train. Well, I guess that's all—you can figure for yourself why we're interested in the girl.”
“I get you!” said the Scorpion, with a sinister grin. “It don't look very hard bucking up against a lone female, and I guess you can telegraph Baldy that he don't need to worry. What do you want—a bunch to pinch the girl, or a box-worker to crack a safe? You can have anything that's on tap—and I guess that ain't passing up many bets.”
Bookie Skarvan shook his head.
“I don't want either—not yet,” he said. “The girl ain't got the money yet, and there ain't anything to do but just watch her and keep her from getting scared until she either grabs it, or lets out where it is.” He leaned forward toward the Scorpion. “D'ye know a place, not far from here, that's called The Iron Tavern?” he demanded abruptly.
The Scorpion shrugged his shoulders.
“Everybody knows it!” he said caustically. “It's a dump! It's the rendezvous of the worst outfit of black-handers in America; and the guy that runs it, a fellow named Dago George, runs the gang, too—and he's some guy. But what's that got to do with it?”
“The girl's there,” said Bookie Skarvan tersely. “Oh, she is, eh?” There was a new and sudden interest in the Scorpion's voice.
“She went there from the train with her grips.” Bookie Skarvan's cigar grew restive in his mouth.
“Well, me, too, I'm for the same joint, only I don't want to take any chances of spilling the beans.”
“You mean you're afraid she'll pipe you off?”
“No,” said Bookie Skarvan. “No, I ain't afraid of that. She never got a peep at me on the train, and she only saw me once before in her life, and that time, besides it being dark and me being outside on the front doorstep, she was so scared I might have been a lamppost, for all she'd know me again. It was the night her old man croaked—see? No, I ain't afraid of her—but I couldn't afford to take any chances by blowing in there right after her. I wasn't afraid of her, but I had my fingers crossed on whoever ran the place, and I guess, after what you've said, that my hunch was right. It was a queer place for her to go right off the bat the minute she landed in New York, and she didn't go there instead of to a decent hotel just by luck—get me? I figured she might stand in there pretty thick—and if she did, and I blew in right on top of her, the betting odds were about one million dollars to a peanut that I'd be a sucker. I'm sure of it now that you say the fellow who runs it is a Dago in the same old line of business that her father was in. What?”
The Scorpion's pale blue eyes scrutinized Bookie Skarvan's face—and lighted with a curious benignity.
“You and Baldy make a pretty good combination, I guess!” he observed with dry admiration.
Bookie Skarvan indulged in his wheezy chuckle. “We've had a little luck together once in a while,” he admitted modestly. “Well, you get me, don't you? I've got to get into that Iron Tavern joint just the same. That's the first card we play. I figured that mabbe this Dago George would know you by reputation anyhow, and that you could fix it for me without it looking as though it were anything more than a friend of yours, say, who'd got into a little temporary difficulty with the police down in Baltimore, say, and was keeping quiet and retired for a few days till the worst of it blew over—and that you'd picked out his joint as the best bet for me.”
The Scorpion got up from his seat abruptly.
“Say,” he said cordially, “I'm glad I met you! That listens good! Sure! I guess I can fix that! Dago George and me ain't exactly pals, and we don't love each other any more than you'd notice—but he knows where he gets off with Cunny Smeeks! You wait a minute, and I'll get him on the phone.”
Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, of the élite of the New York underworld, left the room. Bookie Skarvan sprawled negligently back on the couch. He smiled softly—and chewed contentedly on his cigar. Things were working well.
“There's nothing like credit in this wicked world,” Bookie Skarvan confided sapiently to himself. “I may have to run up quite a bill with Mr. Cunny Smeeks before I'm through, mabbe quite a fat little bill—but he can always send it to Baldy—if I'm not here! What? It's beginning to look good again. Five years I've been trying to get the grappling hook on that coin. It looks pretty good now, and I guess I can see it coming—and I guess I won't have to wait as long as Baldy will!” He wagged his head pleasantly. “I never was fond of San Francisco—and I always wanted to travel! Perhaps Baldy and Mr. Cunny Smeeks won't be such good friends by-and-by. I dunno! I only know that Bookie Skarvan won't be sticking around to see them go into mourning for their share of that hundred thousand that they think they're going to get—not so's you'd observe it!”
Bookie Skarvan's eyes swept the den indifferently and without interest. They fastened finally on the toe of his own boot. The minutes passed, and as they passed a scowl came gradually to Bookie Skarvan's face, and a fat hand in a sudden nervous gesture went to his forehead and brushed across his eyes. His thoughts seemed to have veered into a less pleasant channel.
“Yes,” he muttered, “you can take it from me that I ain't sorry Dave Henderson's dead—not very! He never saw all my cards, and that's the one hold Baldy had on me.” The room was apparently over-heated—for a fat man. A bead of sweat came out on Bookie Skarvan's forehead. He swore savagely. “You damn fool, can't you forget it! You're not afraid of a dead man now, are you!”
The Scorpion came back.
“Come on!” he said, from the doorway. “It's fixed! He put up a howl and wouldn't stand for it at first, and he kicked so hard that I guess he's in with the girl all right. He said he had no place to put anybody; but he came across all right—with a twist of the screws. You're a friend of mine, and your Baltimore spiel goes—see?” The pale blue eyes darkened suddenly. “You get what I've done, don't you? Dago George don't forgive easily, and if this thing busts open and Dago George tumbles to what I've handed him, I'm mabbe going to have a little gang war on my hands.”
“I get you!” said Bookie Skarvan earnestly, as he joined the other in the doorway. “And that goes into the bill at a hundred cents on the dollar—and you know Baldy well enough to know what that means.” The Scorpion laughed.
“Oh, well, it's nothing to worry about! As I told you, I've never been very fond of Dago anyhow, and I guess I can take care of anything he wants to start. There'd be only one of us in at the finish—and it wouldn't be Dago George! You can go the limit, and you'll find you've got the biggest backing—on any count—in little old New York! Well, come on over, and I'll introduce you.”
“Sure! That's the stuff!” said Bookie Skarvan, as he accompanied the other to the street. “Baldy said you were the real goods—and I guess I got to hand it to Baldy!” He chuckled suddenly and wheezingly, as they went down the block. “The Baltimore crook—eh? Me and Dago George! Leave it to me! I guess I can handle Dago George!”
And twenty minutes later, in a room on the third floor of The Iron Tavern, Bookie Skarvan, “handling” Dago George, laid a detaining hand on the proprietor's arm, as the latter was bidding him good-night.
“Look here,” whispered Bookie Skarvan. “I know you're on the level because Cunny Smeeks says so; but I got to lay low, damned low—savvy? I ain't for meeting people—not even for passing 'em out in the hall there. So how about it? Have I got neighbors? I ain't taking any chances.”
Dago George laid his forefinger along his nose—and smiled reassuringly.
“Ah, yes!” he said. “Yes, yes, I understand—eh? But you need have no fear. I do not take guests, except”—he shrugged his shoulders—“except—you understand, eh?—to oblige a friend like Cunny Smeeks. Otherwise”—again the shoulders lifted—“I would not have the so-great honor of offering you a room. Is it not so? Well, then, there is no one here, except”—he jerked his thumb toward the opposite door across the hall—“my niece, who will not trouble you; and in the next room to hers a friend of mine, who will not trouble you either. There is no one else. You need have no fear. I assure you, you need have no fear.”
Bookie Skarvan nodded.
“That's all right, then,” he said in a cordial and relieved tone.
“It's only that I got to be careful.”
He shook hands with Dago George, as the latter again bade him good-night. He closed his door, and sat down. The bulge of the protruding cigar butt metamorphosed what was intended for an amiable smile into an unlovely grimace.
“Niece—eh?” murmured Bookie Skarvan to himself. “Well, well—and in the room across the hall! I guess I won't go to bed just yet, not just yet—but I guess I'll put out the light.”
IT was pitch black. Dave Henderson opened his eyes drowsily. He lay for a moment puzzled and bewildered as to where he was. And then consciousness returned in fuller measure, and he remembered that he had thrown himself down on the bed fully dressed—and must have fallen asleep.
He stirred now uneasily. He was most uncomfortable. Something brutally hard and unyielding seemed to be prodding and boring into his side. He felt down under him with his hand—and smiled quizzically. It was his revolver. He would probably, otherwise, have slept straight through the night. The revolver, as he had turned over in his sleep undoubtedly, had twisted in his pocket, and had resolved itself into a sort of skewer, muzzle end up, that dug ungraciously and painfully into his ribs.
He straightened the revolver in his pocket—and the touch of the weapon seemed to clear his faculties and fling him with a sudden jolt from the borderland of sleepy, mental indolence into a whirl of mental activity. He remembered Millman. Millman and the revolver were indissolubly associated. Only Millman had returned the money. That was the strangest part of it. Millman had returned the money. It was over there now on the floor in the dress-suit case. He remembered his scene with Millman. He remembered that he had deliberately fanned his passion into a white heat. He should therefore be in an unbridled rage with Millman now—only he wasn't. Nor would that anger seemingly return—even at his bidding. Instead, there seemed to be a cold, deliberate, reasoned self-condemnation creeping upon him. It was not pleasant. He tried to fight it off. It persisted. He was conscious of a slight headache. He stirred uneasily again upon the bed. Facts, however he might wish to avoid them, were cold-blooded, stubborn things. They began to assert themselves here in the quiet and the darkness.
Where was that sporting instinct of fair play of his of which he was so proud! Millman had not gone to that pigeon-cote with any treacherous motive. Millman had not played the traitor, either for his own ends or at the instigation of the police. Millman, in blunt language, knowingly accepting the risk of being caught, when, already known as a prison bird, no possible explanation could avail him if he were found with the money in his possession, had gone in order to save a friend—and that friend was Dave Henderson.
Dave Henderson shook his head. No—he would not accept that—not so meekly as all that! Millman hadn't saved him from anything. He could have got the money himself all right when he got out, and the police would have been none the wiser.
He clenched his hands. A voice within him suddenly called him—coward! In that day in the prison library when he had felt himself cornered, he had been desperately eager enough for help. It was true, that as things had turned out, he could have gone safely to the pigeon-cote himself, as he actually had done, but he had not foreseen the craft of Nicolo Capriano then, and his back had been to the wall then, and the odds had seemingly piled to an insurmountable height against him—and Millman, shifting the danger and the risk to his own shoulders, had stepped into the breach. Millman had done that. There was no gainsaying it. Well, he admitted it, didn't he? He had no quarrel with Millman on that score now, had he? He scowled savagely in the darkness. It was Millman with his infernal, quixotic and overweening honesty that was the matter. That was what it was! His quarrel with Millman lay in the fact that Millman was—an honest man.
He sat bolt upright on the bed, his hands clenched suddenly again. Why hadn't Millman kept his honesty where it belonged! If Millman felt the way he did after going to the pigeon-cote and getting that money, why hadn't Millman stuck to his guns the way any ordinary man would, instead of laying down like a lamb—why hadn't he fought it out man to man, until the better man won—and that money went back, or it didn't! Fight! That was it—fight! If Millman had only fought it out—like an ordinary man—and——
“Be honest—at least with yourself!” whispered that inner voice quietly. “Millman was just as honest with you as he was with his own soul. He kept faith with you in the only way he could—and still keep faith with himself. Did he throw you down—Dave?”
For a moment Dave Henderson did not stir; he seemed mentally and physically in a strange and singular state of suspended animation. And then a queer and twisted smile flickered across his lips.
“Yes, he's white!” he muttered. “By God, the whitest man on earth—that's Millman! Only—damn him! Damn him, for the hole he's put me in!”
Yes, that was it! He had it at last, and exactly now! Over there on the floor in the dress-suit case was the money; but it wasn't the money that he, Dave Henderson, had taken a gambler's risk and a sporting chance to get, it wasn't the money he had fought like a wildcat for—it was Millman's money. It wasn't the money he had staked his all to win—he staked nothing here. It was another man's stake. Over there was the money, and he was free to use it—if he chose to take it as the price of another man's loyalty, the price that another man paid for having taken upon himself the risk of prison bars and stone walls again because that other man believed his risk was substituted for the certainty that Dave Henderson would otherwise incur that fate!
The inner voice came quietly again—but it held a bitter gibe.
“What is the matter? Are you in doubt about anything? Why don't you get up, and undress, and go to bed, and sleep quietly? You've got the money now, you're fixed for all your life, and nothing to worry you—Millman pays the bills.”
“Five years!” Dave Henderson muttered. “Five years of hell—for nothing?”
His face hardened. That was Nicolo Capriano lying over there on his bed, wasn't it?—and plucking with thin, blue-tipped fingers at the coverlet—and eyeing him with those black eyes that glittered virulently—and twisting bloodless lips into a sardonic and contemptuous sneer. And why was that barbed tongue of Nicolo Capriano pouring out such a furious and vicious flood of vituperation?
Another vision came—an oval face of great beauty, but whose expression was inscrutable; whose dark eyes met his in a long and steady gaze; and from a full, white, ivory throat, mounting upward until it touched the wealth of hair that crowned the forehead, a tinge of color brought a more radiant life. What would Teresa say?
His hands swept again and again, nervously, fiercely, across his eyes. In the years of his vaunted boast that neither hell nor the devil would hold him back, he had not dreamed of this. A thief! Yes, he had been a thief—but he had never been a piker! He wasn't a vulture, was he, to feed and gorge on a friend's loyalty!
He snarled suddenly. Honesty! What was honesty? Millman was trying to hold himself up as an example to be followed—eh? Well, that was Millman's privilege, wasn't it? And, after all, how honest was Millman? Was there anybody who was intrinsically honest? If there were, it might be different—it might be worth while then to be honest. But Millman could afford that hundred thousand, Millman had said so himself; it didn't mean anything to Millman. If, for instance, it took the last penny Millman had to make good that money there might be something in honesty to talk about—but that sort of honesty didn't exist, either in Millman, or in any other human being. He, Dave Henderson, had yet to see any one who would sacrifice all and everything in an absolutely literal way upon the altar of honesty as a principle. Every one had his price. His, Dave Henderson's, price had been one hundred thousand dollars; he, Dave Henderson, wouldn't steal, say, a hundred dollars—and a hundred dollars was probably an even greater matter to him than a hundred thousand was to Millman, and—
He brought his mental soliloquy roughly to an end, with a low, half angry, half perturbed exclamation. What had brought him to weigh the pros and cons of honesty, anyway! He had never been disturbed on that score in those five years behind prison bars! Why now? It wasn't that that concerned him, that held him now in the throes of a bitter mental conflict, that dismayed him, that tormented him, that mocked at the hell of torture he would—if he yielded—have endured in vain, that grinned at him out of the darkness sardonically, and awaited with biting irony his decision. It didn't matter what degree of honesty Millman possessed; it was Millman's act, in its most material and tangible sense, that threatened now to crush him.
Both hands, like gnarled knobs, went above his head. He was a thief; but, by God, he was a man! If he kept that money there, he became a puling, whining beggar, sneaking and crawling his way through life on—charity! Charity! Oh, yes, he might find a softer name for it; but, by any name, he would none the less feed to the day he died, like a parasite and a damned puny, pitiful whelp and cur, on another man's—charity!
“Give it back—no!” he whispered fiercely through set lips. “I've paid too much—it's mine—I've paid for it with the sweat of hell! It's mine! I will not give it back!”
“Are you sure?” whispered that inner voice. “It begins to look as though there were something in life, say, an honest pride, that was worth more than money—even to you, Dave.”
He sprang restively from the bed to the floor, and groped his way across the room to the light. He was in for a night of it—subconsciously he realized that, subconsciously he realized that he would not sleep, but subconsciously he was prompted to get his clothes off and obtain, lacking mental ease, what physical comfort he could.
He turned on the light, and the act diverted his thoughts momentarily. He did not seem to remember that he had ever turned off that light—but rather, in fact, that the light had been on when Dago George had left the room, and he, Dave Henderson, had flung himself down on the bed. It was rather strange! His eyes circled the room curiously, narrowed suddenly as they fell upon the dress-suit case, and upon one of the catches that appeared to have become unfastened—and with a bound he reached the dress-suit case, and flung up the lid.
The money was gone.
MOTIONLESS, save that his lips twitched queerly, Dave Henderson stood erect, and stared down into the pillaged dress-suit case. And then his hands clenched slowly—tightened—and grew white across the knuckles.
The money was gone! The agony of those days and nights, when, wounded, he had fled from the police, the five years of prison torment which he had endured, seemed to pass with lightning swiftness in review before him—and to mock him, and to become a ghastly travesty. The money was gone!
The pillaged dress-suit case seemed to leer and mock at him, too. He might have saved himself that little debate, which he had not settled, and which was based upon a certain element of ethics that involved the suggestion of charity. It was settled for him now. He owed Millman now one hundred thousand dollars, only the choice as to whether he would pay it or not was no longer his, and——
Damn it! The money was gone! Could he not grasp that one, single, concrete, vital fact, and act upon it, without standing here, with his brain, like some hapless yokel's, agog and maundering? The money was gone! Gone! Where? When? How? He could only have been asleep for a short time, surely. He wrenched his watch suddenly from his pocket. Three o'clock! It was three o'clock in the morning! Five hours! He had been asleep five hours, then! He must have slept very soundly that any one could have entered the room without arousing him!
His lips hardened. He was alert enough now, both mentally and physically. He stepped over to the door. It was still locked. His eyes swept around the room. The window, then! What about the window?
He felt suddenly for his money-belt beneath his underclothing, as he started across the room. The belt was there. That, at least, was safe. A twisted smile came to his lips. Naturally! His brain was exhibiting some glimmer of sense and cohesion now! It was evident enough that no one, since no one knew anything about it, had been specifically after that package of banknotes. It could only have been the work of a sneak thief—who had probably stumbled upon the greatest stroke of luck in his whole abandoned career. It was undoubtedly a quarter of the city wherein sneak thieves were bred! The man would obviously not have been fool enough, with a fortune already in his possession, to have risked the frisking of his, Dave Henderson's, sleeping person! Was the man, then, an inmate of The Iron Tavern, say, that greasy waiter, for instance; or had he gained entrance from outside; or, since the theft might have taken place hours ago, was it a predatory hanger-on at the bar who had sneaked his way upstairs, and——
The window, too, was locked! It was queer! Both window and door locked! How had the man got in—and got out again?
Mechanically, he unlocked and raised the window—and with a quick jerk of his body forward leaned out excitedly. Was this the answer—this platform of a fire escape that ran between his window and the next? But his window had been locked!
He stood there hesitant. Should he arouse Dago George? He could depend upon and trust Dago George, thanks to Nicolo Capriano; but to go to Dago George meant that confidences must be led up to which he desired to give to no man. His brain seemed suddenly to become frantic. The money was gone—his, or Millman's, or the devil's, it didn't matter which now—the money was gone, swallowed up in the black of that night out there, without a clue that offered him a suggestion even on which to act. But he couldn't stand here inactive like a fool, could he? Nor—his brain jeered at him now—could he go out and prowl around the city streets, and ask each passer-by if he or she had seen a package of banknotes whose sum was one hundred thousand dollars! What else was there, then, to do, except to arouse Dago George? Dago George, from what Nicolo Capriano had said, would have many strings to pull—underground strings. That was it—underground strings! It wasn't a police job!
He turned from the window, took a step back across the room, and halted again abruptly. What was that? It came again—a faint, low, rustling sound, and it seemed to come from the direction of the fire escape.
In an instant he was back at the window, but this time he crouched down at the sill. A second passed while he listened, and from the edge of the sash strained his eyes out into the darkness, and then his hand crept into his side pocket and came out with his revolver. Some one, a dark form, blacker than the night shadows out there, was crawling from the next window to the fire escape.
Dave Henderson's lips thinned. Just a second more until that “some one” was half-way out and half-way in, and at a disadvantage and—now!
With a spring, lithe and quick as a cat, Dave Henderson was through the window, and the dark form was wriggling and squirming in his grasp, and a low cry came—and Dave Henderson swore sharply under his breath.
It was a woman! A woman! Well, that didn't matter! One hundred thousand dollars was gone from his dress-suit case, and this woman was crawling to the fire escape from the next room at three o'clock in the morning—that was what mattered!
They were on the iron platform now, and he pushed her none too gently along it toward the window of his own room—into the light. And then his hands dropped from her as though suddenly bereft of power, and as suddenly lifted again, and, almost fierce in their intensity, gripped at her shoulders, and forced her face more fully into the light.
“Teresa!” he whispered hoarsely. “You—Teresa!”
She was trying to smile, but it was a tremulous effort. The great, dark eyes, out of a face that was ivory white, lifted to his, and faltered, and dropped again.
“It's you, Teresa—isn't it?” His voice, his face, his eyes, were full of incredulous wonder.
Her lips were still quivering in their smile. She nodded her head in a sort of quaint, wistful way.
The blood was pounding and surging in his veins. Teresa! Teresa was here, standing here before him! Not that phantom picture that had come to him so often in the days and nights since he had left San Francisco—the glorious eyes, half veiled by the long lashes, though they would not look at him, were real; this touch of his hands upon her shoulders, this touch that thrilled him, was real, and——
Slowly his hands fell away from her; and as though to kill and stifle joy, and mock at gladness, and make sorry sport of ecstasy, there came creeping upon him doubt, black, ugly, and bitter as gall.
Yes, it was Teresa! And at sight of her there had come suddenly and fully, irrefutably, the knowledge that he cared for her; that love, which comes at no man's bidding, had come to him for her. Yes, it was Teresa! But what was she doing here? In view of that money, gone in the last few hours from his dress-suit case, what could Teresa Capriano be doing here in the next room to his?
He laughed a little, low, sharply—and turned his head away. Love! How could he love—and doubt! How could he love—and condemn the one he loved unheard! He looked at her again now; and the blood in his veins, as though over-riding now some obstacle that had dammed its flow, grew swifter, and his pulse quickened. How could he doubt—Teresa!
But it was Teresa who spoke.
“We are standing here in the light, and we can be seen from everywhere around,” she said in a low tone. “You—there is danger. Turn the light off in your room.”
“Yes,” he said mechanically, and stepping back into his room, turned off the light. He was beside her again the next instant. Danger! His mind was mulling over that. What danger? Why had she said that? What was its significance in respect of her presence here? The questions came crowding to his lips. “Danger? What do you mean?” he asked tensely. “And how did you get here, Teresa? And why? Was it your father who sent you? There is something that has gone wrong? The police——”
She shook her head.
“My father died the night you went away,” she said.
He drew back, startled. Nicolo Capriano—dead!
Her father—dead! He could not seem somehow to visualize Nicolo Capriano as one dead. The man's mentality had so seemed to triumph over his physical ills, that, sick though he had been, Nicolo Capriano had seemed to personify and embody vitality and life itself. Dead! He drew in his breath sharply. Then she was alone, this little figure standing here in the darkness beside him, high up here in the world of night, with a void beneath and around them, strangely, curiously cut off, even in a physical sense, from any other human touch or sympathy—but his.
He reached out and found her hand, and laid it between both his own.
“I—I'm no good at words,” he fumbled. “They—they won't come. But he was the best friend I ever, had in life, too. And so I——”
“Don't say that! Don't! You mustn't! Do you hear, you mustn't!” Her hand, that lay in his, was suddenly clenched, and she was striving to draw it away. “It isn't true! I—that is why I came—I came to tell you. He was not your friend. He—he betrayed you.”
He held her hand tighter—in a grip that made her efforts to escape pitifully impotent. And, almost fiercely, he drew her closer, trying to read her face in the darkness.
“He betrayed me! Nicolo Capriano betrayed me!” His mind was suddenly a riot. Incredulity and amazement mingled with a sickening fear that her words were literally true—the money was gone! And yet—and yet—Nicolo Capriano—a traitor! His words rasped now. “Do you know what you are saying, Teresa? Quick! Answer me! Do you know what you are saying?”
“I know only too well.” Her voice had broken a little now. “I know that the money was taken from your room to-night. Please let my hand go. I—you will hate me in, a moment—for—for, after all, I am his daughter. Will you please let me go, and I will tell you.”
Mechanically he released her.
She turned half away from him, and leaned on the iron hand-rail of the platform, staring down into the blackness beneath her.
“Dago George took it—an hour ago,” she said.
“Dago George!” Dave Henderson straightened. “Ah, so it was Dago George, was it!” He laughed with sudden menace, and turned impulsively toward the window of his room.
“Wait!” she said, and laid a hand detainingly upon his sleeve. “The money, I am sure, is safe where it is until daylight, anyway. I—I have more to tell you. It—it is not easy to tell. I—I am his daughter. Dago George was one of my father's accomplices in the old days in San Francisco. That letter which I wrote for my father meant nothing that it said, it contained a secret code that made you a marked man from the moment you delivered it here, and——”
“You, too!” There was bitter hurt in Dave Henderson's voice. And then suddenly he threw his shoulders back. “I don't believe you!” he flung out fiercely. “I don't understand how you got here, or what you are doing here, but you wrote that letter—and I don't believe it was a trap. Do you understand, Teresa—I don't believe you!”
She raised her head—and it seemed that even in the darkness he caught the sudden film of tears in her eyes, and saw the lips part in a quivering smile. She shook her head slowly then.
“It was not what I wrote,” she said. “It was what my—what he added afterwards when he signed it. Con amore—that was the secret code, and——”
“But you did not know that, then—Teresa!” There was a strange, triumphant uplift in his voice. “I remember! It was while you were out of the room. Did I not say I did not believe you!”
Her lips were still quivering, but the smile was gone. “No, I did not know then,” she said. “But his shame is my shame, nothing can alter that—I am his daughter. I did not know it until after you had gone—and then—my father had a—a sudden attack—and that night he died. I—there was only one thing that I could do. I had no way of warning you except to try and get here before you did, or at least to get here before Dago George had gone too far. There—there were things I had to do in San Francisco—and then I came as quickly as I could. I got here to-night. I found that you were already here—just a little ahead of me, and that you had given Dago George the letter. I had only one chance then—to make Dago George believe that I had come, since my father was dead, to carry on the plot against you where my father had left off. Dago George had no suspicions. He knew me.” Her voice held a sudden merciless note. “I was a Capriano. He told me that you were upstairs here, drugged, and he gave me the room next to yours.”
“Drugged!” Dave Henderson passed his hand across his eyes. That accounted for a great deal! He remembered the slight headache with which he had awakened; he was suddenly conscious of it now. “Drugged!” he repeated.
“In a way,” she said, “I was too late. But Dago George, of course, did not know any details, and he had not gone any further than that. He had just left you in your room when I came. He had not, of course, heard from my father, since my father was dead, and he drugged you so that, during the night, he could have free access to your room and your belongings and find out what he could about you. I—I thought to turn him from that purpose by telling him enough of the truth to make him content to wait patiently and watch your movements until you had the money in your possession. Do—do you understand? He said the effects of the drug would wear off in a few hours, and I meant to warn you then, and—and we would both make our escape from here. I—that is why I told you there was danger. Dago George would stop at nothing. He has a band of men here in New York that I know are as unscrupulous as he is; and this place here, I am only too sure, has been the trap for more than one of his victims.”
She paused. Her voice, though guarded, had grown excited, and a little breathless.
It was a moment before Dave Henderson spoke.
“And you?” His voice was hoarse. “If Dago George had found you out you wouldn't have had a chance for your life! And you knew that?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I knew that. But that has no place here. There was no other way.”
“And you did this for me?” His hands reached out, and fell upon the girl's slight shoulders, and tightened there. “You did this for me—Teresa?”
“I did it because there was no other thing to do, because—because”—her voice lost its steadiness—-“it was my father's guilt.”
He drew her closer, with a strange, gentle, remorseless strength.
“And for no other reason—Teresa?” he whispered. “For only that? If it had not been your father? If he had had nothing to do with it? If it had been only me?” Her face was very close to his now, so close that the quick, sudden panting of her breath was upon his cheek, so close that her lips were almost warm upon his own.
She put out her hands, and pressed them with a curious gentleness against his face to ward him off.
“Don't!” Her voice was very low. “Have you forgotten that I am the daughter of the man who meant—who meant perhaps to take your life; that I am the daughter of a criminal?”
“And I”—he had her wrists now, and was holding the soft, trembling hands against his cheeks—“I am a thief.”
“Oh, don't!” She was almost crying now. “You—you don't understand. There is more. I meant, if I could, to take that money from you myself.”
In sheer astonishment he let her go, and drew back a step. She seemed to waver unsteadily on her feet there in the darkness for an instant, and her hand groped out to the platform railing for support; and then suddenly she stood erect, her face full toward him, her head thrown back a little on her shoulders.
“I meant to get it, if I could—to give it back to those to whom it belongs. And I still mean to.” Her voice was quiet now, quivering a little, but bravely under control, “All my life has been a lie. I lived a lie the night I let you go away without a word of protest about what you were going to do. I do not mean to throw the blame upon my father, but with his death all those old ties were broken. Will you try to understand me? I must either now go on in the old way, or go straight with my conscience and with God. I could not bargain with God or my conscience. It was all or nothing. I had a share in enabling you to hoodwink the police. Therefore if you came into possession of that money again, I was as much a thief as you were, and as guilty. But I owed it to you, above all other things, to warn you of your danger; and so I came here—to warn you first—and afterwards, when you were safe from Dago George's reach, to watch you, and get the money myself if I could. Do you understand?
“When I came here to-night, I did not think that you had yet got the money; but something that Dago George said made me think that perhaps you had, and that perhaps he thought so, too. And so I sat there in my room in the darkness waiting until all was quiet in the house, and I could steal into your room and search, if I could get in through either door or window; and then, whether I got in or not, or whether the search was successful or not, I meant to wait until the drug had worn itself off sufficiently to enable me to arouse you, and tell you to get away.
“And then, I do not know what time it was, I heard some one steal up the stairs and go to the door of your room, and work at the lock very, very quietly, and go into your room, and move around in there. I was listening then with my ear to the partition, and I could just make out the sounds, no more. I should never have heard anything had I been asleep; there was never enough noise to have awakened me.
“The footsteps went downstairs, then, and I opened my door and waited until I heard them, louder, as though caution were no longer necessary, on the second landing; and then I stole downstairs myself. There was a light in Dago George's room. It came through the fanlight. The door was closed. But by leaning over the banister of the lower flight of stairs, I could see into the far end of the room through the fanlight. He had a package in his hand. It was torn at one corner, and from this he pulled out what I could see were a number of yellow-back banknotes. He looked at these for a moment, then replaced them in the package, and went to his safe. He knelt down in front of it, laid the package on the floor beside him, and began to open the safe. I heard some one moving above then, and I tiptoed back, and hid in what seemed to be a small private dining room on the second floor. I heard some one go quietly down the stairs, and then I came back here to my room to wait until I could arouse you. The money was in Dago George's safe. It would be there until morning at least, and on that account it no longer concerned me for the moment. And then after a long time I heard you move in your room. It was safer to come this way than to go out into the hall, for I did not know what Dago George might intend to do with you, or with me either, now that he had the money. He would not hesitate to get rid of us both if his cunning prompted him to believe that was his safest course. And I was afraid of that. Only you and I, besides himself, knew anything about that money—and he had got it into his possession. Do you understand? When I heard you move, I started through the window to go to you, and—and you saw me.”
Dave Henderson had sunk his elbows on the iron railing, his chin resting in his hands, and was staring at the strange, fluted sky-line where the buildings jabbed their queer, uneven points up into the night. It was a long time before he spoke.
“It's kind of queer, Teresa,” he said slowly. “It's kind of queer. You're something like a friend of—like a man I know. It's kind of queer. Well, you've given me my chance, you've risked your life to give me my chance, you've played as square as any woman God ever made—and now what are you going to do?”
She drew in her breath sharply, audibly, as though startled, as though his words were foreign, startlingly foreign to anything she had expected.
“I—have I any choice?” she answered. “I know where the money is, and I must notify the authorities. I must tell the police so that they can get it.”
Dave Henderson's eyes, a curious smile in them that the darkness hid, shifted from the sky-line to the little dark figure before him.
“And do you think I will let you tell the police where that money is?” He laughed quietly. “Do you? Did you think you could come and tell me just where it was, and then calmly leave me, and walk into the police station with the news—and get away with it?”
She shook her head.
“I know!” she said. “You think it's a woman's inconsistency. It isn't! I didn't know what you would do, I don't know now. But I have told you all. I have told you what I intend to do, if I possibly can. I had to tell you first. If I was to be honest all the way with myself, I had first of all to be honest with you. After that I was free. I don't know what you will do. I don't see what you can do now. But if you keep me from notifying the police to-night—there is to-morrow—and after that another to-morrow. No matter what happens, to you, or to me, I am going through with this. I”—her voice choked suddenly—“I have to.”
Dave Henderson straightened up.
“I believe you!” he said under his breath. “After what you've done, I'd be a fool if I didn't. And you're offering me a square fight, aren't you, Teresa?” He was laughing in that quiet, curious way again. “Well, I'm not sure I want to fight. Just before I found out that money was gone, I was wondering if I wouldn't give it back myself.”
“Dave!” It was the first time she had ever called him by his name, and it came now from her lips in a quick, glad cry. Her hands caught at both his arms. “Dave, do you mean that? Do you? Dave, it is true! You're honest, after all!”
He turned his head away, a sudden hard and bitter smile on his lips.
“No,” he said. “And I haven't made up my mind yet about giving it back, anyway. But maybe I had other reasons for even getting as far as I did. Not honesty. I can't kid, myself on that. I am a thief.”
Her fingers were gripping at his arms with all their strength, as though she were afraid that somehow he would elude and escape her.
“You were a thief”—it seemed as though her soul were in the passionate entreaty in her voice now—“and I was the daughter of a criminal, with all the hideous memories of crime and evil that stretch back to childhood. But that is in the past, Dave, if we will only leave it there, isn't it? It—it doesn't have to be that way in all the years that are coming. God gives us both a chance to—to make good. I'm going to take mine. Won't you take yours, Dave? You were a thief, but how about from now on?”
He stood rigid, motionless; and again his face was turned away from her out into the darkness.
“From now on.” He repeated the words in a low, wondering way.
“Yes!” she cried eagerly. “From now on, Dave. Let us get away from here, and go and notify the police that Dago George has that money, and—and—and then, you see, the police will come and get it, and return it where it belongs, and that will end it all.”
It was a moment before he turned toward her again, and then his face was white, and drawn, and haggard. He shook his head.
“I can't do that,” he said hoarsely. “There are more reasons than one why I can't do that.” Her hands were clasping his arms. He forced them gently from their hold now, and took them in his own, and drew her closer to him, and held her there. “And one of those reasons is you, Teresa. You've played fair with me, and I'll play fair with you. I—I can't buy you with a fake. I——”