Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

To get rid of Red Vallon! Any excuse—anything! To get rid of the man—without an instant’s delay!

He shoved out his hand to the gangster.

“I won’t forget this, Red!” he said earnestly. “Take it from me, I won’t forget it! But you beat it now, Red. That Dayler game went wrong to-night—the Cadger’ll tell you about it, if you see him—and I haven’t got a minute. See—Red?”

“Sure! All right!” agreed the gangster heartily. “Well, so long, Bundy!”

Billy Kane shook hands again—with a grip that was hard and eloquent.

“So long, Red!” he said.

The gangster turned away. 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!

His mind worked swiftly, incisively, as he ran. The Pippin had had, say, ten minutes’ start, but it was only a few blocks to that house next door to Marlot’s saloon, and it would take a little while at least for the police to make their preparations before acting on the Pippin’s information. The chances lay with him, Billy Kane. The man might, or might not, be there. It did not matter in so far as the main issue was concerned. It was that handbag and its contents that were the vital factor now—and, yes, if he got that, the envelope too—they would both almost certainly be in the same hiding place—inasmuch as that hiding place was a crafty one. If the man were there, then it seemed as though irony would have piled itself on irony to-night, for he would automatically for the time being become the ally of the man with whom he asked only a deadly reckoning! He did not want the police to get the Man with the Crutch. Whatever the story the man might tell to account for his connection with Peters, it was certain that he would not be fool enough to tell the truth about the murder of David Ellsworth! And if the police had the Man with the Crutch in custody, then he, Billy Kane, was irrevocably barred from that reckoning which he meant to have.

He had been perhaps five minutes. He was trying the door now of a wretched, two-story frame building, that hugged, as its right-hand neighbor, a saloon that was almost as disreputable in appearance as itself. The door was unlocked. He stepped inside, and, feeling his way in the darkness, but still moving rapidly, passed down a narrow hall. By the sense of touch he was aware that there were rooms on only one side, the left-hand side, and that there were two of them. He brought up abruptly against a door now that made the end of the passage; the door of the rear room of the house obviously, and obviously, therefore, the “home” of the Man with the Crutch. It was silent everywhere in the house. He smiled a little grimly. He knew the place well enough by reputation to account for that silence. It was a crooks’ nest, a crooks’ lodging house, and, being night, the tenants had gone to work!

He slipped his mask over his face, and rapped on the door. There was no answer. He rapped again; and then his skeleton keys came into play. The man had obviously returned here from Dayler’s to get rid of that envelope, though probably not at once, for it must have been then that the Pippin had seen him; but now apparently he had gone out again.