Frank L. Packard

“ Billy Kane did not answer. The Rat! The Rat was back! It was the moment, arrived at last, that had haunted him from the moment he had taken upon himself the other’s personality here in the underworld; but though he was more at the other’s mercy with that revolver muzzle boring into his neck, more helpless than he had thought to be when this time should arrive, more powerless where, instead, he had told himself a hundred times that at the worst it could be but a fight man to man, he found himself far more unmoved now than he had anticipated he would be. ”

“ Murder! Yes, he knew now beyond question that there was to be murder, that the stage for it was set with a devil’s craft, with the craft of the Rat whose identity he had assumed; that it would appear on the face of it nothing more than quite a logical outcome of the life led by young Merxler, that there would appear to be no connection whatever with young Merxler’s death and what was to follow—but what was it that was to follow? How, in what way, was this murder, in dollars and cents, to show a profit at the next meeting of that unhallowed directorate of crime? ”

“ The fiendishness of it all had got him now—-Karlin with his suave, oily, Judas smile, preening at his Vandyke beard—and Merxler, for all that he had played the fool for several years now, still with a frank and boyish face, his broad shoulders squared back as he laughed a pleasant greeting. There was a whiteness in Billy Kane’s face, a whiteness that was like to the fury, no longer cold, that was white-hot in his soul. Murder! Well, perhaps—but it would not be Merxler’s murder! He whipped his mask from his pocket, and adjusted it swiftly over his face. ”

“ Billy Kane drew suddenly back from the window, and crouched down again against the wall of the building. Someone, unless he were curiously mistaken, was out there in the lane at the rear of the place. He was listening intently now—but there was a strange turmoil in his brain that seemed somehow to divide his attention, that had made his act of caution one that was almost purely automatic. Murder! That casual discussion of murder! There was something within him, soul deep, that he could not quite analyse—save that it seemed a lust for murder was upon him too, possessing him, engulfing him. ”

“ And now as he stared at the missive in his hand, angry flush rose slowly to his cheeks, and he half made as though to tear the paper into shreds. God knew, he had enough to do to keep his own life in his own body without this; there was scarcely a moment of the day or night when he was not battling with all the wits he possessed to save himself from discovery—from the police as Billy Kane, from the underworld as the spurious Rat—and his brain was already sick and tormented beyond endurance with the struggle. ”

“ The grim smile was still on Billy Kane’s lips, as he crouched back against the wall. The door of the telephone booth opened, and Laverto stuck his head out furtively. The little black eyes, staring out of the thin, swarthy face, glanced up and down the passageway, and then the head seemed to shrink into the shoulders, the body to collapse, and, with legs twisted and dragging under him, there came the flop-flop of the palms of the man’s hands on the bare wooden flooring, as he started along the passageway. ”

“ He asked only one thing in life now, and to that everything else was subordinate—to feel his hands upon the throat of the man who had murdered David Ellsworth, and who had fastened that guilt upon him—Billy Kane—to wring from that man a confession that would clear his name. Nothing else mattered. He could run for it, discard this rôle of the Rat, and perhaps effect his escape, but he would thereby throw away almost every hope of bringing the guilty man to justice. The other way was to fight. Well, he would fight! It would be a good fight! And, as the Rat, he would not have to fight alone! ”

“ The underworld looked askance and whispered through the corners of its mouth as it asked the question: Who was the man in the mask? And he, Billy Kane, who could answer that question, sitting here in Two-finger Tasker’s in the heart of that underworld, was asking himself another, a dozen others, whose answers were vital, life and death to him in the most literal sense. Who was the Woman in Black, who, like a Nemesis, hovered over the Rat? Where was the man whose personality had been so strangely thrust upon him, Billy Kane? When would the Rat return? ”

“ What was it that Peters had had here, that had been the object of such a frantic search? Billy Kane drew his breath in suddenly, sharply. What could it be save one thing! The Ellsworth rubies! That was it, wasn’t it—rubies!
A sound from somewhere out in the hall brought surging back upon him a realization of his own imminent peril. There must be some way out, he must find a way. If he knew Red Vallon at all, he knew that he, Billy Kane, would never leave by the door! Well, a fire escape then, perhaps! ”

“ Billy Kane drew back once more silently and swiftly to the front of the hall. He was tight-lipped now. It seemed as though every turn of the luck had gone against him. Peters was certain to notice that the door was unlocked. What effect would that have on Peters? What would the man do, and——
Billy Kane was staring down the hall in a numbed, dazed way. Two men had come into the radius of light from the stair well, and were moving quickly along the hall in his direction. He brushed his hand across his eyes. That little horde of devils were at their jeers of unholy mirth again. ”

“ And now, safe for the moment, Billy Kane’s mind was back on the events of the evening; and for a time grief for the man he loved had its sway; and then came fury, pitiless and remorseless, and a cry in his soul for vengeance; and then a quiet, measured analysis of every detail, an analysis that was deadly in its cold, unnatural calm. Jackson’s acts in that back passageway, Jackson’s possession of a revolver, and Jackson’s words at the end stamped the footman irrevocably as being one of the men in the murder plot. ”

“ Billy Kane dove down the stairs, opened the door of the den, locked it behind him, darted across the room in the darkness, and in another minute, crawling through the tunnel from the secret door, gained the shed and the street at the rear. He ran breathlessly now. What did it matter if any one saw him! Time alone was all that counted! If he could not beat the police in the race to that room he was as good as dead already! ”

“ Billy Kane shifted his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other—to hide a smile in which there was no humor. His intuition, if it were intuition, had not been at fault. A woman had just entered the dance hall. He was not likely to mistake that slim, graceful figure, nor those dark, steady eyes—that were spanning the room and resting upon him. He could not see the lurking mockery in those eyes, the distance was a little too great for that, but his imagination could depict it readily enough. Nor did it require much imagination! It was the Woman in Black. He glanced at Red Vallon. ”

“ The brain and mind was in riot from it. It was evening now; it had been the strangest day through which any man had ever lived.
He had held court that morning and through the day, here in the Rat’s lair—a sort of grim, unholy court to which grim, unholy courtiers had flocked to pay him homage. And these courtiers had been admitted to the presence one by one, their names announced by Whitie Jack, who had acted—quite innocently, quite free from any thought of connivance—as the master of ceremonies. Billy Kane’s lips twisted in a mirthless smile. ”

“ And now it had come like a flash, the clearing of Billy Kane’s brain, and now it was brutally clear, clear beyond any possibility of misunderstanding; and, as a man walking in a fog that had suddenly lifted, he found himself reeling, in the full consciousness of its horror, on the brink of a yawning chasm.
“My God!” he cried heavily. “This is damnable! I——”
“Keep quiet, sir!” implored Jackson frantically. “They’ll hear you! If you care anything about a chance for your life, don’t make a sound. The police figured that you would do one of three things, sir. ”

“ He turned slightly away. An anger, smoldering in his soul, burst into flame. He was the Rat by proxy—and the proxy was damnable. He could not tell her he was not the Rat. He could not tell her he was—Billy Kane. He must play on with his detestable rôle! He must play the Rat. What answer would the Rat have made to her?
“Cut that out!” rasped Billy Kane.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I spoke impulsively. There are only two things in life that affect you—your own safety, and to be quite sure that you get all of your share out of your crimes, and, if possible, somebody else’s share as well. ”

“ There was one clue which had developed, but a clue that was to be entrusted to neither Red Vallon, nor Birdie Rose, nor any of the pack. Even they, case-hardened, steeped in crime though they were, might balk at pushing that clue to its ultimate conclusion. They might weaken at the limit! He, Billy Kane, would not weaken, because, as between his own life and the life of one who he was already satisfied was a murderer, he would not fling his own life away! ”

“ It was quite dark here on the street, but even so Billy Kane kept his face turned slightly away from the gangster. The blood was racing in one mad, ungovernable flood of feverish excitement through his veins. It seemed somehow as though a weight that had been unendurable, an actual physical burden beyond his strength to bear, had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. The Man with the Crutch! From the prior events of the evening, from what Red Vallon had just said, there was no possibility that the Pippin had stumbled upon another man with a crutch. ”