“Dave!” She struggled to free herself. “Dave,
“Wait!” His voice was rough with emotion. “We'll talk straight—there isn't any other way. I—I think I loved you, Teresa, that night, the first time I saw you, when you stood on the threshold of your father's room. To-night I know that I love you, and———-”
“Dave!”
His hold had brought her very close again to him. He could see a great crimson tide flood and sweep the white and suddenly averted face.
“Wait!” he said again. “I think I have learned other things as well to-night—that you care, Teresa, too, but that the stolen money stands between you and me. That is what I mean by buying you, and your love, with a fake. If I returned the money on that account it would not be because I had suddenly become honest—which is the one thing above all else that you ask for. It would not be for honesty's sake, but because I was a hypocrite and dishonest with you, and was letting the money go because I was getting something for it that was worth more to me than the money—because I was making a good bargain that was cheap at a hundred thousand dollars. I can't make myself believe that I feel a sense of honesty any more to-night than I did the night I first took that money, and I would be a cur to try to make you think I did.”
He could feel her hands tremble in his; he could see the sweet face, the crimson gone from it, deathly pale again. Her lips seemed quivering for words, but she did not speak. And suddenly he dropped her hands; and his own hands clenched, and clenched again, at his sides. There was biting mockery at himself stirring and moiling in his brain. “You fool! You fool!” a voice cried out. “She's yours! Take her! All you've got to do is change your tune; she'll believe you—so if you're not honest, why don't you steal her?”
“Listen!” It seemed as though he were forcing himself to speak against his will. “There is another reason; but, first, so that you will understand, there is Millman. It is too long a story to tell you all of it. Millman is the man I spoke of—who is honest—like you. I told him when I was in prison where the money was, and I thought he had double-crossed me. Instead, he gave it back to me to-night—that is how I got it so soon.” He laughed out sharply, harshly. “But Millman said if I didn't give it back to the estate of the man from whom I took it, he would pay it out of his own pocket, because, for me, he had been a thief, too. Do you understand? That's why I said I didn't know what I was going to do. My God—I—I don't know yet. I know well enough that if the police were tipped off to-night, and got the money, that would let Millman out of paying it; but that's not the point. I can't squeal now, can I? I can't go sneaking to the police, and say: 'There it is in Dago George's safe; I can't get my own paws on it again, so I've turned honest, and you can go and take it!' I wouldn't like to face Millman and tell him the money had gone back that way—because I couldn't help it—because it had been taken from me, and I was doing the smug act in a piker play!”
She stepped toward him quickly.
“Dave,” she whispered tremulously, “what do you mean? What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to get that money—from Dago George,” he said in a flat voice. “I'll get that money if I go through hell again for it, as I've been through hell for it already. Then maybe it'll go back where it came from, and maybe it won't; but if it does go back, it'll go back from Dave Henderson—not Dago George!”
She clutched frantically at his arm.
“No, no!” she cried out.
“Listen!” he said. “You have said you meant that money should be returned if it were within your power to accomplish it. I understand that. Well, no matter what the result, to Dago George or to me, I am going down there to get that money—if I can. But if I get it, I do not promise to return it. Remember that! I promise nothing. So you are free to leave here; and if you think, and perhaps you will be right, that the surest way to get the money back is to go instantly to the police, I shall not blame you. If the police can beat me to it before I settle with Dago George, they win—that's all. But in any case, it is not safe for you stay in this place, and so——”
“I was not thinking of that!” she said in a low voice. “Nor shall I leave this house—until you do. I—I am afraid—for you. You do not know Dago George.”
He did not stir for a moment; and then, with some great, overwhelming impulse upon him, he took her face in both his hands, and held it there upturned to his, and looked into the great dark eyes until the lashes dropped and hid them from his gaze.
“Teresa,” he whispered low, “there are some things that are worse than being a thief. I couldn't lay down my hand now, if I wanted to, could I? I can't quit now, can I? I can't crawl. I took that money; and, whether I mean to give it back myself, or keep it, I'd rather go out for good than tell the police it's there, and see the sneer for an honest man—turned honest because he had lost his nerve, and didn't dare go after the money and face the risk of a showdown with Dago George, which was the only way in which he could stay dishonest. Teresa, you see, don't you?” His voice was passionate, hungry in its earnestness. “Teresa, what would you do—play the game, or quit?”
The lashes lifted, and for a moment the dark eyes looked steadily into his, and then they were veiled again.
“I will wait here for you,” she said.
THE silence seemed like some uncanny, living, breathing thing. It seemed to beat, and pulsate, until the ear-drums throbbed with it. It seemed to become some mad, discordant chorus, in which every human emotion vied with every other one that it might prevail over all the rest: a savage fury, and a triumphant love; a mighty hope, and a cruel dismay; joy, and a chill, ugly fear. And the chorus rose and clashed, and it seemed as though some wild, incoherent battle was joined, until first one strain after another was beaten down and submerged, and put to rout, until out of the chaos and turmoil, dominant, supreme, arose fury, merciless and cold.
Dave Henderson crept along the upper hall. The pocket flashlight in his hand, one of his purchases on the way East, winked through the blackness, the round, white ray disclosing for a second's space the head of the stairs; and blackness fell again.
He began to descend the stairs cautiously. Yes, that was it—fury. Out of that wild riot in his brain that was what remained now. It drew his face into hard, pitiless lines, but it left him most strangely cool and deliberate—and the more pitiless. It was Dago George who was the object of that fury, not Nicolo Capriano. That was strange, too, in a way! It was Nicolo Capriano who had done him the greater wrong, for Dago George was no more than the other's satellite; but Nicolo Capriano's treachery seemed tempered somehow—by death perhaps—by that slim figure that he had left standing out there in the darkness perhaps; his brain refused to reason it out to a logical conclusion; it held tenaciously to Dago George. It seemed as though there were a literal physical itch at his finger-tips to reach a throat-hold and choke the oily, lying smile from the suave, smug face of that hypocritical bowing figure that had offered him a glass of wine, and, like a damnable hound, had drugged him, and——
Was that a sound, a sound of movement, of some one stirring below there, that he heard—or only an exaggerated imagination? He was half-way down the upper flight of stairs now, and he stopped to listen. No, there seemed to be nothing—only that silence that palpitated and made noises of its own; and yet, he was not satisfied; he could have sworn that he had heard some one moving about.
He went on down the stairs again, but still more cautiously now. There was no reason why there shouldn't be some one moving about, even at this hour. It might be Dago George himself. Dago George might not have gone to bed again yet. It was only an hour, Teresa had said, since the man had come upstairs and stolen the money. Or it might be some accomplice who was with Dago George. He remembered Teresa's reference to the band of blacklegs over whom Dago George was in command; and he remembered that some one had come down the stairs behind her and Dago George. But Teresa herself had evidently been unseen, for there had been no attempt to find or interfere with her. It had probably therefore been—well, any one!
It presented possibilities.
It might have been an accomplice; or a prowling guest, if there were other guests in this unsavory hostelry; or a servant, for some unknown reason nosing about, if any of the disreputable staff slept in the place at night—the cook, or the greasy waiter, or the bartender, or any of the rest of them; though, in a place like this, functionaries of that sort were much more likely to go back to their own homes after their work was over. It would not be at all unlikely that Dago George, in view of his outside pernicious activities, kept none of the staff about the place at night.
Dave Henderson's jaws closed with a vicious snap. Useless speculation of this sort got him nowhere! He would find out soon enough! If Dago George were not alone, there were still several hours till daylight; and he could wait his chance with grim patience. He was concerned with only one thing—to square accounts with Dago George in a way that would both satiate his fury, and force the man to disgorge the contents of his safe.
His jaws tightened. There was but one, single, disturbing factor. If anything went wrong, Teresa was still upstairs there. In every other respect the stage was set—for any eventuality. He had even taken the precaution, before doing anything else, to get their valises, hers and his, out of the place, since in any case they meant to steal away from this accursed trap-house of Dago George. It had been simple enough to dispose of the baggage via the fire escape, and through the yard, and down the lane, where the valises had found a temporary hiding place in a shed, whose door, opening on the lane, he had discovered ajar, and simple enough, with Teresa's help in regaining the fire escape from the ground, to return in the same way; but he had been actuated by more than the mere idea of being unimpeded in flight if a critical situation subsequently arose—though in this, his ulterior motive, he had failed utterly of success. Teresa had agreed thoroughly in the wisdom of first removing their belongings; but she had refused positively to accompany and remain with the baggage herself, as he had hoped he might induce her to do. “I wouldn't be of any use there, if—if anything happened,” she had said; “I—I might be of some use here.” Neither argument nor expostulation had been of any avail. She was still above there—waiting.
He had reached the head of the lower flight of stairs, and now he halted, and stood motionless. There was a sound from below. It was neither imagination nor fancy; it was distinct and unmistakable—a low, rasping, metallic sound.
For an interval of seconds he stood there listening; then he shifted the flashlight, switched off now, to his left hand, and his right hand slipped into his pocket for his revolver. He moved forward then silently, noiselessly, and, as he descended the stairway, paused at every step to listen intently again. The sound, with short, almost negligible interruptions, persisted; and, with if now, it seemed as though he could distinguish the sound of heavy breathing. And now it seemed, too, as though the blackness were less opaque, as though, while there was still no object discernible, the hallway below was in a sort of murk, and as though, from somewhere, light rays, that were either carefully guarded or had expended, through distance, almost all their energy, were still striving to pierce the darkness.
Tight-lipped now, a few steps farther down, Dave Henderson leaned out over the bannister—and hung there tensely, rigidly.
It was like looking upon some weird, uncannily clever effect that had been thrown upon a moving picture screen. The door of Dago George's room was wide open, and through this he could see a white circle of light, the rays thrown away from and in the opposite direction to the door. They flooded the face of a safe; and, darkly, behind the light itself, two figures were faintly outlined, one kneeling at the safe, the other holding a flashlight and standing over the kneeling man's shoulder. And now the nature of the sounds that he had not been able to define was obvious—it was the click of a ratchet, the rasp of a bit eating voraciously into steel, as the kneeling man worked at the face of the safe.
For a moment, his eyes narrowed, half in sudden, angry menace, half in perplexity, he hung there gazing on the scene; and then, with all the caution that he knew, his weight thrown gradually on each separate tread to guard against a protesting creak, he went on down the stairs.
It was strange—damnably and most curiously strange! Was one of those figures in there Dago George? If so, it would account for the presence of a second man—the one Teresa had heard coming down stairs. But, if so, what was Dago George's game? Was the man going to put up the bluff that he had been robbed, and was therefore wrecking his own safe? That was an old gag! But what purpose could it serve Dago George in the present instance? It wasn't as though he, Dave Henderson, had confided the package to Dago George's keeping, and Dago George could take this means of cunningly securing it for himself. Dago George had stolen it—and, logically, the last thing Dago George would do would be to admit any knowledge of it, let alone flaunt it openly!
At the foot of the stairs, Dave Henderson discarded that theory as untenable. But if, then, neither one of the two in there was Dago George—where was Dago George? It was a little beyond attributing to mere coincidence, the fact that a couple of marauding safe-breakers should have happened to select Dago George's safe to-night in the ordinary routine of their nefarious vocation. Coincidence, as an explanation, wasn't good enough! It looked queer—extremely queer! Where he had thought that no one, save Millman and himself, had known anything about the presence of that money in New York to-night, it appeared that a most amazing number were not only aware of it, but were intimately interested in that fact!
He smiled a little in the darkness, not pleasantly, as he crept now, inch by inch, along the hall toward the open door. He, too, was interested in that package of banknotes in the safe! And, Dago George or the devil, it mattered very little which, there would be a showdown, very likely now a grim and very pretty little showdown, before the money left that room in any one's possession save his own!
From ahead, inside the room, there came a slight clatter, as though a tool of some sort had been dropped or tossed on the floor. It was followed by a muttered exclamation, and then a sort of breathless, but triumphant grunt. And then a voice, in a guttural undertone:
“Dere youse are, sport! Help yerself!”
Dave Henderson crouched back against the wall. He was well along the hall now, and quite close enough to the doorway of Dago George's private domain to enable him, given the necessary light, to see the whole interior quite freely. The door of the safe, in a dismantled condition, was swung open; strewn on the floor lay the kit of tools through whose instrumentality the job had been accomplished; and the man with the flashlight was bending forward, the white ray flooding the inside of the safe.
There came suddenly now a queer twitching to Dave Henderson's lips, and it came coincidentally with a sharp exclamation of delight from the man with the flashlight. In the man's hand was the original package of banknotes, its torn corner identifying it instantly to Dave Henderson, and evidencing with equal certainty to its immediate possessor that it was the object, presumably, which was sought.
And now the man with the flashlight, without turning, reached out and laid the package on the desk beside the safe. The movement, however, sent the flashlight's ray in a jerky half circle around the room, and mechanically Dave Henderson raised his hand and brushed it across his eyes. Was that fancy—what he had seen? It was gone now, it was dark in there now, for the flashlight was boring into the safe again, and the man with the flashlight seemed intent on the balance of the safe's contents. It had been only a glimpse, a glimpse that had lasted no longer than the time it takes a watch to tick, but it seemed to have mirrored itself upon Dave Henderson's brain so that he could still see it even in the darkness: It was a huddled form on the floor, close by the bed, just as though it had pitched itself convulsively out of the bed, and it lay there sprawled grotesquely, and the white face had seemed to grin at him in a horrid and contorted way—and it was the face of Dago George.
The man with the flashlight spoke suddenly over his shoulder to his companion:
“You've pulled a good job, Maggot!” he said approvingly. “Better than either Cunny or me was looking for, I guess. And so much so that I guess Cunny had better horn in himself before we close up for the night. You beat it over to the joint and bring him back. Tell him there's some queer stuff in this safe besides what we were after and what we got—some gang stuff that'll mabbe interest him, 'cause he said he wasn't very fond of Dago George. I don't know whether he'll want to take any of it or not, or whether he'd rather let the police have it when they wise up to this in the morning. He can look it over for himself. Tell him I want him to see it before I monkey with it myself. You can leave your watchmaker's tools there. You ought to be back in a little better than ten minutes if you hurry. We got a good hour and more yet before daylight, and before any of the crowd that work here gets back on the job, and until then we got the house to ourselves, but that's no reason for wasting any fleeting moments, so get a move on! See?”
“Sure!” grunted the other.
“Well, then, beat it!”
Footsteps sounded from the room, coming in the direction of the doorway, and Dave Henderson slipped instantly across the hall, and edged in behind the door,-that, opening back into the hall, afforded him both a convenient and secure retreat. The smile on his lips was more pleasant now. It was very thoughtful of the man with the flashlight—very! He cared nothing about the other man, who was now walking stealthily down the hall toward the front door; the money was still in that room in there! Also, he was glad to have had confirmed what he had already surmised—that Dago George slept alone in The Iron Tavern.
The front door opened and closed again softly. Dave Henderson stole silently across the hall again, and crouched against the opposite wall once more, but this time almost at the door jamb itself.
The flashlight, full on, lay on the desk. It played over the package of banknotes, and sent back a reflected gleam from the nickel-work of a telephone instrument that stood a few inches further along on the desk. The man's form, his back to the door, and back of the light, was like a silhouetted shadow. It was quiet, silent now in the house. Perhaps five seconds passed, and then the man chuckled low and wheezingly.
Dave Henderson grew suddenly rigid. It startled him. Somewhere he had heard that chuckle before—somewhere. It seemed striving to stir and awaken memory. There was something strangely familiar about it, and——
The man, still chuckling, was muttering audibly to himself now.
“Sure, that's the dope! The Scorpion—eh? Cunny the Scorpion! Nice name! Well, we'll see who gets stung! I guess ten minutes' start ain't good enough; but if some one's chasing the Scorpion, he won't have so much time to chase me. Yes, I guess this is where I fade away—with the goods. By the time there's been anything straightened out, and even if he squeals if he's caught, I guess I'll be far enough away to worry—not!”
Dave Henderson's face had grown as white and set as chiselled marble; but he did not move.
The man leaned abruptly forward over the desk, picked up the telephone, chuckled again, and then snatched the receiver from the hook. And the next instant, his voice full of well-simulated terror, he was calling wildly, frantically, into the transmitter:
“Central!... Central!... For God's sake!... Quick!... Help!... I'm Dago George.... The Iron Tavern.... They're murdering me.... Get the police!... For God's sake!... Get the police.... Tell them Cunny Smeeks is murdering me.... Hurry!... Quick!... For God's——”
The man allowed the telephone and the unhooked receiver to crash abruptly to the floor. The cord, catching the flashlight, carried the flashlight with it, and the light went out.
And then Dave Henderson moved. With a spring, he was half-way across the room—and his own flashlight stabbed a lane of light through the blackness, and struck, as the other whirled with a startled cry, full on the man's face.
It was Bookie Skarvan.
THE little red-rimmed eyes blinked into the glare—it was the only color left in the white, flabby face—the red rims of the furtive little eyes. Bookie Skarvan's fat hand lifted and tugged at his collar, as though the collar choked him. He fell back a step and his heel crunched upon the telephone transmitter, and smashed it. And then Bookie Skarvan licked his lips—and attempted a smile.
“I,” mumbled Bookie Skarvan, “I—I can't see your face. Who—who are you?” The sound of his own voice, husky and shaken as it was, seemed to bring him a certain reassurance. “What do you want? Eh—what do you want?” he demanded.
Dave Henderson made no reply. It seemed as though his mind and soul and body were engulfed in some primal, savage ecstasy. Years swept their lightning sequence through his brain; hours, with the prison walls and iron bars around him, in which he had promised himself this moment, seemed to live their life and existence over again. He said no word; he made no sound—but, with the flashlight still playing without a flicker of movement upon the other, he felt, with the back of his revolver hand, over Bookie Skarvan's clothing, located in one of the pockets Bookie Skarvan's revolver, and, with utter contempt for any move the man might make through the opening thus given him, hooked the guard of his own revolver on the little finger of the hand that held the flashlight, and unceremoniously jerked the other's weapon out from the pocket and tossed it to the far end of the desk. The flashlight lifted then, and circled the walls of the room. Bookie Skarvan's complaint had not gone unheeded. Bookie Skarvan would have ample opportunity to see whose face it was! The flashlight found and held on the electric-light switch. It was on the opposite wall behind Bookie Skarvan. Dave Henderson shoved the man roughly out of the way, stepped quickly forward to the wall, switched on the light—and swung around to face Bookie Skarvan.
For an instant Bookie Skarvan stood there without movement, the little eyes dilating, the white face turning ashen and gray, and then great beads of sweat sprang out upon the forehead—and a scream of abject terror pealed through the room.
“Go away!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “You're dead! Go away! Go back to hell where you belong!” His hands clawed out in front of him. “Do you hear? You're dead—dead! Go away! Curse you, damn you—go away!”
Dave Henderson spoke through closed teeth:
“You ought to be satisfied then—Bookie. You've wanted me dead for quite a while—for five years, haven't you?”
There was no answer.
Dave Henderson's eyes automatically swept around the now lighted room. Yes, that was Dago George there on the floor near the bed, lying on the side of his face, with a hideous gash across his head. The man was dead, of course; he couldn't be anything else. But anyway, Dago George was as something apart, an extraneous thing. There was only one thing in the world, one thing that held mind and soul and body in a thrall of wild, seething, remorseless passion—that maudlin, grovelling thing there, whose clawing hands had found the end of the desk, and who hung there with curious limpness, as though, because the knees sagged, the weight of his body was supported by his arms alone—that thing whose lips, evidently trying to form words, jerked up and down like flaps of flesh from which all nerve control had gone.
“Maybe you didn't know that I knew it was you who were back of that attempt to murder me that night—five years ago.” Dave Henderson thrust the flashlight into his pocket, and took a step forward. “Well, you know it now!”
A sweat bead trickled down the fat, working face—and lost itself in a fold of flabby flesh.
“No!” Bookie Skarvan found his tongue. “No! Honest to God, Dave!” he whined. “It was Baldy.”
“Don't lie! I know!” There was a cold deadliness in Dave Henderson's tones. “Stand away from the desk a little, so that I can get a look at that telephone on the floor! I don't want any witness to what's going to happen here, and a telephone with the receiver off——”
“My God!” Bookie Skarvan cried out wildly. “What are you going to do?”
“Yes, I guess it's out of commission.” Dave Henderson's voice seemed utterly detached; he seemed utterly to ignore the other for a moment, as he looked at the broken instrument.
Bookie Skarvan, in an access of fear, mopped at his wet face, and his little red-rimmed eyes, like the eyes of a cornered rat, darted swift, frantic glances in all directions around the room.
“Dave, do you hear!” Bookie Skarvan's voice rose thin and squealing. “Why don't you answer? Do you hear! What—what are you going to do?”
“It's queer, kind of queer, to find you here, Bookie,” said Dave Henderson evenly. “I guess there's a God—Bookie. How did you get here—from San Francisco?”
Bookie Skarvan licked at his dry lips, and cowered back from the revolver that was suddenly outflung in Dave Henderson's hand.
“I—I followed the girl. I thought you'd opened up to the old man, and he'd bumped you off with that bomb to get the stuff for himself. I was sure of it when he died, and she beat it for here.”
“And to-night?” Dave Henderson's voice was rasping now.
“I got the room opposite hers.” Bookie Skarvan gulped heavily; his eyes were fixed, staring now, as though fascinated by the revolver muzzle. “She came downstairs. I followed her, but I don't know where she went to. I saw the package go into the safe. I could see through the fanlight over the door. I saw him”—Bookie Skarvan's hand jerked out toward the huddled form on the floor—“I saw him put it there.” Mechanically, Dave Henderson's eyes followed the gesture—and narrowed for an instant in a puzzled, startled way. Had that dead man there moved? The body seemed slightly nearer to the head of the bed!' Fancy! Imagination! He hadn't marked the exact position of the body to begin with, and it was still huddled, still inert, still in the same sprawled, contorted position. His eyes reverted to Bookie Skarvan.
“You had a man in here with you at work on that safe, a man you called Maggot, and you sent him, with that dirty brand of trickery of yours, to bring back some one you called Cunny the Scorpion, with the idea that instead of finding you and the money here—they would find the police.” There was a twisted, merciless smile on Dave Henderson's lips. “Where did you get into touch with your friends?”
Bookie Skarvan's eyes were roving again, seeking some avenue of escape, it seemed. Dave Henderson laughed shortly, unpleasantly, as he watched the other. There was only the door and the window. But he, Dave Henderson, blocked the way to the door; and the window, as he knew through the not-too-cursory examination he had made of it when he had come down the fire escape with the valises, was equally impassable. It had been in his mind then that perhaps he, himself, might gain entrance to Dago George's room through the window—only the old-fashioned iron shutters, carefully closed and fastened, had barred the way.
“Well?” He flung the word sharply at Bookie Skarvan.
“I—Baldy knew the Scorpion.” Bookie Skarvan's fingers wriggled between his collar and his fat neck. “Baldy gave me a letter to him, and the Scorpion put one over on—on that fellow on the floor, and got me a room here upstairs. And when I saw the money going into the safe I beat it for the Scorpion, and got him to give me a box-worker, so he got Maggot for me, and——”
“You hadn't the nerve, of course, when you saw Dago George putting the money in the safe, to tackle the job alone before the safe was locked!” There was grim, contemptuous irony in Dave Henderson's voice. “You're the same old Bookie, aren't you—yellow as the sulphur pit of hell!” His face hardened. “Ten minutes, you said it would take them to get back. It's not very long, Bookie. And say two or three minutes longer, or perhaps a little more, for the police, allowing for the time it would take central to get her breath after that nerve racking cry for help you sent her. Or maybe the police would even get here first—depending on how far away the station is. I'm a stranger here, and I don't know. In that case, there wouldn't be even ten minutes—and part of that is gone now. There isn't much time, Bookie. But there's time enough for you and me to settle our little account. I used to think of what I'd do to you when I got out on the other side of those iron bars. I used to think of it when I couldn't sleep at night in my cell. I kept thinking of it for five years, Bookie—and here we are to-night at last, the two of us, you and me, Bookie. I overheard Runty Mott explain the whole plant you had put up to murder me, so there's no use of you lying, there's no use of you starting that—that's one thing you haven't got time to do. You'd better clean house, Bookie, for there isn't room enough in this world for the two of us—one of us has got to go.”
Bookie Skarvan had crouched against the end of the desk again. He cringed now, one arm upraised as though to ward off a blow.
“What—what are you going to do?” The words came thick and miserably. Their repetition seemed all that his tongue was capable of. “What—what are you going to do?”
“I can't murder you!” Dave Henderson's face had grown set and colorless—as colorless as his tone. “I wish to God I could! It's coming to you! But I can't! There's your revolver on the end of the desk. Take it!”
Again and again, Bookie Skarvan's tongue licked at his lips.
“What do you mean?” he whispered.
“You know what I mean!” Dave Henderson answered levelly. “Take it!”
“My God!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “No! My God—no! Not that!”
“Yes—that! You're getting what I swore I'd never give you—a chance. Either you or I are going out. Take that revolver, and for the first time in your life try and be a man; or else I'll fix you, and I'll fix it so that you won't move from here until your friend the Scorpion gets his chance at you for the pleasant little surprise you had arranged for him with your telephone trick, or until the police carry you out with a through ticket to the electric chair for what looks like murder over there on the floor. You understand—Bookie? I'll make you fight, you cur! It's the only chance you've got for your life. Now—take it!”
Bookie Skarvan wrung his hands together. A queer crooning sound came from his lips. He was trembling violently.
“There aren't very many of those ten minutes left, Bookie,” said Dave Henderson coldly. “But if you got in a lucky shot—Bookie—you'd still have time to get away, from here. And there's the money there, too—you could take that with you.”
The man seemed near collapse. Great beads from his forehead ran down and over the sagging jowls. He moaned a little, and stared at the revolver that lay upon the desk, and reached out his hand toward the weapon, and drew his hand back again. He looked again at Dave Henderson, and at the muzzle of the revolver that covered him. He seemed to read something irrevocable and remorseless in both. Slowly, his mouth working, his face muscles twitching, he reached again to the desk, and pulled the revolver to him; and then, his arm falling nervelessly, he held the weapon dangling at his side.
Dave Henderson's revolver was lowered until it pointed to the floor.
“When you lift your hand, Bookie, it's the signal,” he said in a monotone.
Bookie Skarvan's knees seemed to bend and sag a little more—there was no other movement.
“I'm waiting,” said Dave Henderson—and pulled the trigger of his revolver to put a shot into the floor.
There was the click of the falling hammer—no more. A grim smile played across Dave Henderson's lips. It was as well, perhaps, that he had tried in that way to startle, to frighten, this terrified, spineless cur who stood there into action! The cartridge that he had depended upon for his life had missed fire! He pulled the trigger again. The hammer clicked. He pulled again—his eyes never leaving Bookie Skarvan's face. The hammer clicked.
For the fraction of a second the room seemed blurred to Dave Henderson. The chambers of his revolver were empty! His brain seemed to sicken, and then to recover itself, and leap into fierce, virile activity. He was at the mercy of that cringing hound there—if the other but knew it. It seemed as though all the devils of hell shrieked at him in unholy mirth. If he moved a step forward to rush, to close with the other, the very paroxysm of fear that possessed Bookie Skarvan would instinctively incite the man to fire. There was one way, only one way—the electric light switch behind him. If he could reach that without Bookie Skarvan realizing the truth, there would be the darkness—and his bare hands. Well, he asked no more than that—only that Bookie Skarvan did not get away. His bare hands were enough.
He moved back a single step, as though shifting his position, his face impassive, watching the dangling weapon in the other's shaky hand, watching the other's working lips. The chamber of his revolver was empty! How? When? It had been fully loaded when he lay down on the bed. Yes! He remembered! It was queer that it had twisted like that in his sleep. Dago George! It came in a lightning flash of intuition. Dago George, cautious to excite no suspicion, had been equally cautious to draw, his, Dave Henderson's, teeth!
He edged back another step—and stopped, as though rooted to the spot. Bookie Skarvan, that dangling revolver in the other's hand, his own peril, all, everything that but an instant before had obsessed his mind, was blotted out from his consciousness as though it had never existed. That huddled form, that murdered man on the floor behind Bookie Skarvan, that he could see over Bookie Skarvan's shoulder, had raised his hand in a swift, sudden movement, and had thrust it under the mattress at the head of the bed, and had snatched out a revolver.
It was quick, quick as thought, quick as the winking of an eye. A shout of warning rose to Dave Henderson's lips—and was drowned in the report of the revolver shot, deafening, racketing, in the confined space. And, as though thrown into relief by the flash and the tongue flame of the revolver, a picture seemed to sear itself into Dave Henderson's brain: The up-flung arms of Bookie Skarvan, the ghastly surprise on the sweat-beaded face, the fat body spinning grotesquely like a run-down top—and pitching forward to the floor. And through the lifting smoke, another face—Dago George's face, working, livid, blood-smirched, full of demoniacal triumph. And then a gurgling peal of laughter.
“Yes, and you, too! Con Amore!” gurgled Dago George. “You, too!”
The man was on his knees now, lurching there, the revolver swaying weakly, trying to draw its bead now on him, Dave Henderson. He moved with a spring to one side toward the door. The revolver, as though jerked desperately in the weak hand, followed him. He flung himself to the floor. A shot rang out. And then, as though through the flash again, another picture lived: The revolver dropping from a hand that could no longer hold it, a graying face that swayed on shoulders which in turn rocked to and fro—and then a lurch—a thud—and, the face was hidden between out-sprawled arms—and Dago George did not move any more.