Part 9 (1/2)

”Go to it, Bundy! Spill it!” He circled his lips with his tongue. ”If you say so, that goes! What's the lay?”

”Five hundred thousand dollars-a half million-cold”-Billy Kane had lowered his voice.

He did not look at either of the men, but he was watching them both intently-his eyes were on the mirror, the mirror of the bureau at the far end of the room, that bore testimony to the cunning of his unwitting host. The mirror held the door and the upper part of the room in focus; and, lying there on the bed, he had the profiles of the two men in distinct outline. Karlin was fingering his Vand.y.k.e in a sort of hesitant incredulity. Vallon's face had suddenly blotched red with rapacious excitement.

”Gawd!” Red Vallon spluttered out. ”D'ye mean that, Bundy?”

”Sure, I mean it!” Billy Kane answered a little curtly. ”What do you think I told you to come here for? Sure, I mean it! It's all there-right on the table, hitting you between the eyes.”

Red Vallon jerked himself around; and, as though he had taken the words literally, stared with a frown of bewilderment at the only thing in view upon the table-the newspaper that Whitie Jack had dropped there when he had answered the summons at the door.

Billy Kane laughed quietly.

”Get it, Red?” he inquired. ”Five hundred thousand dollars-better than diamonds-blood-red rubies-red with blood, the paper says. Can't you read?”

Karlin had forgotten his beard. His hands clenched on his knees.

”You mean the Ellsworth murder-the robbery?” He was whispering hoa.r.s.ely.

”You win!” said Billy Kane.

”My G.o.d!” whispered Karlin. ”Do you know where that stuff is?”

Billy Kane's eyes had returned to the mirror, and now suddenly they s.h.i.+fted a little to the wall at the side of the bureau. Something cold and forbidding seemed to grip at him, numbing for an instant mental and physical action-and then left him in a state of grim, unnatural calmness. Was it imagination? He could have sworn that the wall _moved_ slightly. He swung over on his left side, as though to face Karlin and Red Vallon more directly before he answered them-but his hand, slipping into his coat pocket, closed over his revolver. It _might_ be imagination, but the possibility remained that someone was on the other side of that secret door, and, having pushed the door almost imperceptibly open, was listening there. If that were so, he must get rid of Red Vallon and Karlin before any denouement came if possible, get rid of them without an instant's loss of time; but equally vital was the necessity of setting in motion, and equally without loss of time, the machinery of the underworld upon which now he was practically staking his all.

”Pull your chair over here, closer to the bed, Red-and you, too, Karlin,” he said coolly. ”We aren't likely to be heard from the street, but that's no reason for shouting. No; I don't know where they are, I haven't got the rubies in my pocket-but I know how to get them there.

What?”

Red Vallon's face was working in a sort of antic.i.p.atory and avaricious ugliness; Karlin's expression was scarcely less rapacious.

”Go on, Bundy!” Karlin said under his breath. ”What do you know about it?”

”What you could have read for yourself in the paper,” Billy Kane answered tersely. ”And it looks like a cinch. It's just a case of beating the police to it, and it sizes up as though we had the jump on them.” He was speaking almost mechanically. His mind was on that section of the wall that _might_ have moved; and through half-closed eyes, but as though deep in thought and as though concentrated on what he was saying, he was watching it narrowly. It had not moved a second time, of that he was sure; perhaps it had not moved at all, it might be only nerves on his part, nerves high strung, taut to the breaking point, but his fingers were still rigid around the stock of his revolver, and, in the pocket, the weapon, resting on his hip as he lay sideways, held a bead on the panels of the secret door.

”I don't quite get you,” muttered Karlin, with a frown.

Red Vallon swore roughly, intolerant in his eagerness.

”Aw, give him a chance!” he said impatiently. ”If he says so, that's good enough for me. Bundy never pulled a steer in his life, an' if he says this is a cinch-that goes! Give him a chance!”

”It's like this,” said Billy Kane. ”It's a thousand to one shot that this secretary chap who croaked the old millionaire and got away with the goods is still in New Work. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. After pulling the murder, according to the papers, he beat it out of the house with the loot, and evidently hid the stuff somewhere. Then he came back to the house again, and the footman, Jackson, grabbed him. But there was a good half hour between the time the police found out about the murder and before this guy Kane came back to the house. Get me? And during that time the police got busy and shot flycops around all the stations and ferries. It's a cinch, the way I look at it, that after he crawled into that lane and they lost him there, that he's been crawling ever since somewhere around New York. He never left the city-he never had a chance.”

Red Vallon whistled low and complacently under his breath; Karlin, fingering his Vand.y.k.e again, nodded sharply now in approval.

”Besides,” added Billy Kane, ”he had sort of queered his own game. He'd hidden the loot somewhere, and he couldn't make a direct get-away then.

He had to get hold of the goods again before he went. All right! What I want to know is who's got the better chance of grabbing him-us or the police? He isn't one of us. He's working on his own. Well, all right! If we nip him, and he's satisfied with a little rake-off, and is willing to cough up the rest, that'll be treating him fair. If he isn't strong on coughing up, we'll find another way of making him come across that he won't like so well, and we'll get the half million, and he'll get--”

Billy Kane completed his sentence with a significant shrug of his shoulder.

An oath, the more callous and brutal for the soft purring way in which it fell from his lips, came from Red Vallon.