Part 23 (2/2)

Her laugh rippled through the room. It was low and coolly disdainful, but it seemed to Billy Kane, standing by the mantel, tight-lipped, watching the scene, that it held, too, a queer, underlying, tremulous note.

Dayler wet his lips.

”Thirty-five.”

”That paper is the only thing that will save you,” she explained monotonously. ”Is money any good to you-unless you live?”

It was Dayler who laughed now, but it was hysterically. His hands would not remain still. He had let his head alone now, and, instead, kept laying his hands on the table in front of him, by turns opening and clenching them, and they left damp prints on the top of the table.

”Fifty-I-I'll make it fifty thousand dollars,” he whispered.

She shook her head.

”My G.o.d!” It was a helpless cry. Dayler stretched out his arms imploringly. ”You don't understand! It's not easy for me to get even that amount. I'm not worth what you think I am. I-I've gone the limit.”

Her voice was still monotonous.

”Are you _sure_?” she asked.

”Give me-give me time, and-and I might make it a little more.” There was no doubt of the agonized sincerity in the man's voice. ”Perhaps-sixty.”

”No!” she said. She was on her feet now, her voice breaking a little. ”I want more than that-what it will perhaps be harder for you to give than sixty thousand dollars. I want your forgiveness for what I have just made you suffer-for this scene here. I had reasons, reasons that I believed justified me.” She glanced at Billy Kane. ”I do not think you would understand, and I am afraid you would not see the justification in them even if I tried to explain, and so”-she had drawn the manila envelope from the bodice of her dress, and was holding it out to him-”I can only ask you to forgive me.”

He took the envelope wonderingly, rising slowly to his feet. He was like a man dazed. Stupefaction, incredulity, a mighty relief, mingled their expressions in his face. He turned the envelope over and over; and then, opening it, extracted a folded piece of paper from within. And then for the second time his laugh rang through the room, but now it was a laugh like the laugh of a man that was insane, high-pitched, sustained.

”Go on!” he cried wildly. ”Go on with your h.e.l.lish tricks! What's next?”

Billy Kane had involuntarily stepped closer to the table. He drew in his breath sharply now, in an amazed, startled way. Dayler was holding a _blank_ piece of paper in his hands!

And she, too, was leaning tensely forward. He glanced at her. She turned her head toward him; and out of a face that was as white as death, her dark eyes burned full of fury and bitter condemnation, as they fixed upon him.

”I see it now!” Her lips were quivering with pa.s.sion. She steadied her voice with an obvious effort. ”I gave you credit for too much! I caught you at your work just a second too late. I thought you were taking an envelope out of the safe, whereas you were attempting to put one _in_!

The one you took out was already in your pocket. You were checkmating your miserable accomplices unquestionably-but it was for your own ends!

You were playing the traitor to them and to me at the same time. You meant, with your cold-blooded cunning, to use that paper against Mr.

Dayler for your own private gain. You lied to me! It wasn't an empty safe to which you meant to introduce the Cadger and Gannet; there was a little more finesse, it clouded the issue a little more to put a dummy envelope there. And it was so easy! Just one of those envelopes taken from the drawer there, and a piece of paper slipped inside!” She paused an instant, surveying him with merciless eyes. ”I hardly suppose that you would be fool enough not to have already put it in a safer place than your pocket, but if you still have it there-_hand it over!_”

Billy Kane did not move. Somehow he was not paying undivided attention to her. It was the Man with the Crutch who seemed to be standing there in her place, grinning at him-only he could not see the man's face. And then, with a mental jerk, he pulled himself together. He could not tell her that he had almost caught someone else in the act of stealing the paper, but that the ”some one else” had got away. It would sound ridiculous! She would laugh in his face! He could not tell her that, like a thunderbolt falling upon him, there had just come the realization that the Man with the Crutch had stolen the paper after all. He could not explain the Man with the Crutch, Peters' murder, a hundred other things, so that she would believe him, without telling her that he was Billy Kane. And he could not tell her that he was Billy Kane! The old, hard, ironical, mirthless smile came to his lips. He was-the Rat!

”Maybe you'd like to search me!” he snarled insolently.

She turned to Dayler. The man had sunk into his chair again and was smiling now, but in a horribly apathetic sort of way.

”Mr. Dayler,” she said quietly, ”it does not matter in the least if he has got rid of it for the moment. I promise you that paper will be in your possession again by to-morrow morning.” She swung on Billy Kane, and pointed to the door. ”I think you heard what I said, Bundy”-her voice was ominously low now, strained with menace-”I will give you until to-morrow morning to produce that paper. The alternative is the electric chair.”

She was still pointing to the door.

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