Arthur Stringer

“ It was then only that she understood the significance of Keudell's smile. Some time during her retreat across the room the door that led to the hall had been silently opened and closed. And without dreaming of what awaited her, she had backed into the arms of Keudell's gorilla-like accomplice.
She knew this, but she did not waste energy in any prolonged resistance, for she also knew that it was foolish to struggle against the pressure of Canby's vise-like arms. Yet she watched for her chance, watched with a wariness born of desperation. ”

“ Then came the climb to another tinned roof with a locked transom, another tile-covered party-wall which taxed her strength to surmount, another series of roofs in ever ascending planes, and then a flat house-top studded with clothes-line stanchions, between which stood a square frame shed like the deck-house of a schooner.
At the back of this roof-shed Sadie found a door that opened on a steep and narrow flight of steps. She paused for just one moment, first to look back, then to stow away her revolver, and then to straighten her hat. ”

“ She had been infected with an echo of Sadie's excitement as the latter, listening intently with the microphone at her ear, suddenly leaned forward, turned a switch and began slowly revolving the polished white dial which stood on the small table at the center of the room. She had caught the other woman's faint gasp of satisfaction as two diminished figures, clear in outline for all the prismatic tints which haloed their images, crossed the face of the dial.
"That's Andelman!" said Sadie under her breath. ”

“ Keudell, she felt convinced, would never permit her to escape. Things had gone too far. And a Keudell out of sight implied a Keudell maneuvering in some secret manner against her, making ready to confound her with some blow that would be as unexpected as it would be decisive.
Sadie's next move was to swing about and face the open door. But even in that corroding storm of anger at the affronts which had been heaped upon her, much of her native wariness remained with her. So as she crept toward the hall-door she did so with a series of movements that were feline in their noiselessness. ”

“ Heinold caught at a chair-back and swung it above his head. Andelman dropped low behind the table. Canby, wheeling sharply about, whipped a revolver from his pocket and thrust it in front of him with a slight stabbing motion. At the same instant, from below stairs, came the sound of a shot, thick and muffled, synchronizing with the movement of the diminutive figure as neatly as the off-stage "business" of a melodrama. Keudell could see the thin cloud of smoke drift across the dial-face, for a moment obscuring the figures. ”

“ The door itself was not encouraging. But above it stood a transom, the glass of which had at some time been replaced by a heavy walnut panel. This transom, she felt, was the one assailable point in the enemy's line. So she decided to storm it.
To storm it, however, was not an altogether easy matter. But Sadie's wits had in the past risen to emergencies even greater than this. She stood for a moment deep in thought. Then she quietly dragged the tapestry-covered box-couch toward the door. This couch she turned over and stood up on end, making sure it was firmly fixed against the floor-boards. ”

“ Wilsnach felt the raven wing of tragedy that fluttered over them, and he did his best to brush it away. "Then I would never have known you! I wouldn't have been fit to sit beside you! And the dead past has buried its dead, and we're not going to dig it up. We've got a whole lifetime to look forward to!"
"A whole lifetime!" she echoed.
"And once we've helped Kestner clear up this Keudell case we'll be free to start over."
He thought, for a moment, that the sudden release of his hand was due to her resentment at the intrusion of those sterner realities which they had for the moment evaded. ”

“ She was still holding him back by his right arm, swung somewhat behind him in his effort to reach his hip pocket, when Keudell's huge figure blocked the doorway.
She did not actually see the revolver still in their enemy's hand. She was no more conscious of it than she was of the figures that crowded close at Wilsnach's heels. All she saw was the malignity of Keudell's heavy and colorless face. In its slightly vacuous and foolish-looking eyes she beheld only venom. It was the venom of ultimate and unreasoning hate. ”

“ Kestner, instead of re-echoing the rest of that sentence, suddenly sprang to his feet. He leaned over the table, pushed back the loose cluster of dark crimson buds, stared there for a second or two and then sat down again.
"So that's his game!" he ejaculated. Then before either Wilsnach or Sadie could speak, he was on his feet again.
"Quick!" he cried to Wilsnach, as he leaned over the vase and with one fierce jerk freed the annunciator from its wires. "They've heard every word we've been saying! Get the waiter! Go right to the kitchen if you have to!" ”

“ She ran back to the door and tugged at the knob. Then she fell to kicking at the panels. But this resulted in nothing. And she knew, by this time, that Wallaby Sam had deliberately, and a little more promptly than she had expected, made her a prisoner.
She stood there for a minute or two in the darkness, schooling herself to calmness. Then she felt her way carefully about the room, padding along the solid wall until she came to the light-button. To her relief, as she pushed this, a solitary electric bulb flowered into light in the ceiling above her. ”

“ Her hand was quite steady as she opened her hand-bag and took Wilsnach's revolver from its hiding-place there. Quite steady, too, was her tread as she advanced to the closed door, listened there and then pressed a straining ear against the dark panel, as Dorgan himself had done.
She could hear nothing more. All movement, apparently, had ceased. But she waited, listening intently. The silence remained unbroken.
The quietness of that house of mystery no longer puzzled her. It became a source of apprehension, of actual alarm. ”

“ Sadie, as she stood staring at him, decided that much of that woebegone buoyancy was based on the courage which is paid for over a mahogany bar. For Dorgan's figure was not an inspiriting one. Over one eye and surrounding his entire head was a huge white bandage, startlingly suggestive of Zuleika's pontifical turban. A diminutive mountain-ridge of court-plaster adhered to his lower lip, and along the point of his right jaw-bone ran still another spur of plaster, to say nothing of divers abrasions about the collarless and bull-like neck. ”

“ She next reached for the rocker-rod tied to the rope-end, carefully lowering it through the opened transom. Then she took a deep breath, for she knew the hardest part of her task was still ahead of her. To emerge head down from a transom seven feet high is no easy matter. But to do this encumbered with skirts, half choked with dust and in utter darkness, takes unto itself the nature of both an exercise in audacity and an adventure in acrobatics.
But Sadie knew her possibilities. As she slowly and silently vermiculated over the dust-covered door-lintel she retained her hold on the cotton rope. ”

“ She felt no regret at the discovery that Keudell's nose was bleeding profusely, giving an air of sodden dejection to his haughtily up-turned Teutonic mustache. She felt no sympathy for the bruised and battered Dorgan, with his discolored eyes and his sadly torn clothing. His ultimate fate did not even concern her. She was sick of the whole house. Her soul was by this time preoccupied with its one passion, its one undeviating and all-consuming passion to escape, to get away from that abode of uncouth encounters and mysterious enemies. ”

“ Wilsnach smiled at her solemnity. He could afford to be indulgent. He had vindicated his discovery. His exotic little side-street restaurant had yielded them up a dinner that was irreproachable. Sadie had eaten her way through that dinner with the open and honest appetite of a healthy boy. Wilsnach himself had dined with the delight of a truant who had found the balm of freedom edged with the zest of adventure. ”

“ There was a wait of some time before the door itself was opened. It was opened by an oddly hirsute man in the service-coat of a butler. Sadie, whose quick eyes had taken him in at a glance, found him almost as unprepossessing as the house itself. He was a peculiarly large-boned and muscular-looking man, with his hairy skin singularly suggestive of a gorilla. His eyes seemed much too small for his heavy-jowled face, and about their haggard corners was a touch of animal-like pathos. ”

“ Miss Mabel Poole's apprehensions as to that tyrannical new patient of hers did not decrease as she stared across the darkened room. She was, in fact, the second nurse to be called in. The first one, she had been told at the register in Strong's drug-store, had been unceremoniously bundled back within the hour of her arrival. The sick woman had disliked her personality. And Miss Poole, being still young and ardent, did not wish to share her fate. So, nursing a human distaste for defeat, she squared her young shoulders to the situation with the solemn cheerfulness of youth. ”

“ By this time Sadie had collected her wits and started for the door. Yet before she stepped from the car platform she made a second and even more disconcerting discovery. Moving aimlessly along through the ever-shifting crowd, with the air of a man who had no object in view and no mission in life, Wilsnach himself passed within ten feet of her. And she knew, at a glance, that Wilsnach was shadowing Shindler. ”

“ For walking slowly along the platform with his habitual air of aimless vacuity she caught sight of Shindler himself.
There, not thirty feet away from her, she had the dubious triumph of beholding the one man in all the world she had the least desire to see. For Shindler and Strasser, she very well knew, were one and the same man.
If for a moment Sadie shrank unconsciously back between her fellow-travelers, at the sight of that disturbingly familiar figure, her scrutiny of the gentleman in question was none the less pointed. ”

“ She knew that Dorgan was no coward, yet she also knew that in some undefined way she was cleverer than this man with the belligerent square jaw and the wiry black hair. She recalled what Wilsnach had already told her about Dorgan being at one time a prize-fighter. She herself, in the days which she kept behind the locked door of her memory, had had occasion to study a prize-ring professional at close range, and her contempt for that gentry was open and unqualified. It left her less afraid of Dorgan. Life's final victories, Sadie had long since learned, were not won by fists. ”

“ Still again he broke off for Wallaby Sam and Heinold were groping and stumbling their way down the stairs. They had switched out the light behind them, Sadie noticed, but they had not stopped to lock the door. Of that she was positive. And on that she built her hopes.
She sidled noiselessly along the wall, working her way step by cautious step toward the stair-head. Her movements were equally deliberate as she groped for the door-knob, caressed it between her strong young fingers and carefully turned it. As she expected, it yielded and swung back to her pressure. ”

“ Sadie, quick as thought, stopped and veered about so that she faced the door nearest her on the opposite side of the hall. She seemed to be staring at this door with troubled anxiety.
"Pawdon me," she drawled over her shoulder to the advancing figure, "but is this Miss Derfflinger's room?"
"Derfflinger?" repeated the man in the bathrobe, eying her suspiciously. "There's no Miss Derfflinger in this house."
"There must be," suavely argued Sadie Wimpel, with one ear cocked for any telltale sound from the upper regions through which she had so recently descended. ”

“ But Sadie entertained no intention of speaking to him. To do that would end a situation which might never come again. So Sadie kept her eyes shut and made the most of it.
Wilsnach, as he stared down into her face, felt the injustice of it all. It was not the kind of work into which any woman should have been dragged. Sadie, he knew, was not like other women. ”

“ For time was the one thing for which she was still fighting.
"Hand over those papers!" repeated Keudell. And Sadie knew it was not a moment for trifling.
She slipped a hand down inside Dorgan's coat, unbuttoned the pocket-flap, and drew out the yellow manila envelope which he had stored away there. There was something more than reproof in Dorgan's eye as she did so; there was blind revolt and the white heat of a rage that had no chance of exhausting itself in action. But by this time Dorgan was a mere incident in the widening circle of Sadie's enterprises. ”

“ It left every doorway an imminent menace and every corner a possible ambush. Her groping fingers came in contact with a door-frame, yet she was afraid to turn the knob. Darkness had imposed on her its accumulation of uncertainties. She even began to entertain exaggerated ideas of distances, imagining that she had traversed scores of feet where she had covered only as many inches.
Still again, as she advanced on her shoeless feet, she encountered the square of a door-frame between which she could feel the panels of the closed door itself. ”