Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

Billy Kane went on to the intersecting street at the other end of the alleyway, removed his mask, and stepped out on the sidewalk. He looked at his watch under a street lamp, and smiled whimsically in surprise. It was still only half-past eight. All told, he could not have been in Wong Yen’s more than fifteen minutes, hardly that, in fact, and it seemed as though he had been there half the night!

Well, it was Barloff’s now! Barloff’s was a little farther uptown, a little deeper over in the East Side. Billy Kane’s smile, from whimsical, became tinged a little with weariness, became a little wan, as he walked along. He was the victim of a plot himself, that was aimed at his life, that sought to throw the guilt of a crime upon his shoulders, just as the Wop was. And circumstances not only permitted, but seemed to force him constantly into these byways to save others, while he himself stood condemned in the eyes of the public as a murderer and a thief; and there was bitter irony in the thought that he could not clear his own name, that he seemed powerless to help himself, while the mantle of one of the underworld’s archcriminals, which temporarily afforded him sanctuary from the police, supplied him with almost unlimited information and the means of helping others!

His brows knitted suddenly into a puzzled frown. Was that altogether true?

There seemed to be a most strange coincidence in these excursions, forced or voluntary, of his into the byways of criminal things, a coincidence that always seemed in some way to link up his own plight with these other criminal schemes in which he became involved. There was the night that Peters had been murdered, for instance, which had led him to the knowledge that the Man With The Crutch was at least a co-murderer of David Ellsworth. And then the attempt at blackmail of two nights ago had again disclosed the hand of the Man With The Crutch, and, more significant still, had enabled him, Billy Kane, to recover the cash stolen from the library vault on the night of the Ellsworth murder. Who was this Man With The Crutch—this man with a crutch whose shaft was stained to resemble grained wood and so disguise the murderous iron of which it actually consisted, and which, he was sure now, was the weapon that had brought both David Ellsworth and Peters to their deaths?

Billy Kane shook his head. It was a curious chain of coincidence, but it could be only coincidence. And there was a limit to that. To-night, for instance, it would put a pretty severe strain upon the imagination to conceive of any connection between the Wop and the Man With The Crutch! And yet——

He shrugged his shoulders. He would have said the same thing two nights ago, wouldn’t he? It was very strange! It was all strange! He seemed to be existing in a sphere of unreality. There was the Man With The Crutch, whom neither police nor underworld could find since that raid on the man’s room; there was the constant, ominous swirl and eddy of hidden and unseen things on every hand; there was the Rat—and there was the Woman in Black!

His face softened suddenly. He had not seen her since yesterday morning when she had entered the Rat’s den through the secret door, and he had returned to her Dayler’s letter. She had not been in a pleasant mood at what she believed had been his trickery; and, failing to have restored that letter to her, she would have turned him, whom she, like every one else, believed to be the Rat, incontinently over to the police. What was the hold she had upon the Rat? Where was she to-night? How was it that her hand had not already showed in this attempt upon the Wop, since she seemed to have always in her possession the details of the Rat’s schemes?

He shrugged his shoulders again. What was the use! To-night, at least, she could harbor no delusion that he was acting under any spur of hers! No, that wasn’t it—that wasn’t what was troubling him. What troubled him was that she should think him what he was, or, rather, all that he was not! Strange that her opinion of him, even when his back was against the wall and his life was literally in jeopardy at every turn, should make any difference! Strange that the loathing and contempt in those brown eyes, that were fearless and deep and steady, should haunt him, and add to his own abhorrence of the rôle he played because he must let her think him the Rat! Well, what did it matter? What was she to him? What was she becoming to him? He laughed a little uncertainly. There was no need to answer that question, was there—even if he could? What did anything matter unless he could clear his own name, which was now mired deeper than the Rat’s!

He turned a corner, walked on the length of a block, and on the next corner, drawing back into a doorway out of the radius of the street lamp, paused a moment to get his bearings. He smiled a little grimly. If the affair ever came to her knowledge, would she give the Rat credit this time for a spontaneous change of heart in saving the Wop’s life, and saving Ivan Barloff’s cash? He scowled suddenly. The latter proposition did not altogether please him. Barloff was not far removed in guilt from those who proposed to victimize Barloff! There would be a certain ironical justice in robbing from Barloff the cash that Barloff had all too patiently, a great portion of it at least, robbed from others! But Red Vallon and his pack were not to get it, were they? It was the lesser evil to warn Barloff, that was all. In the main, therefore, the night’s work was over, since the Wop was safe, for five minutes’ conversation with Barloff would end the whole affair now, so far as he, Billy Kane, was concerned.

He glanced down the street. Just a little ahead, on the opposite side, huddled in between two six-story tenements, was Barloff’s squat, dingy, little house. There was a faint glow of light, as though it came from somewhere far in the interior, showing through the single front window on the ground floor. Billy Kane considered this thoughtfully for a few seconds. Barloff was at home evidently, but the probability was that one, at least, of Red Vallon’s men was on watch in front of the house. In fact, it wasn’t probability; it was a certainty. Barloff, according to Red Vallon, was to receive a fake telephone message that would lure him out of the house, and someone undoubtedly would be waiting to report the old Russian’s exit. It therefore, to say the least of it, would be—Billy Kane’s smile was mirthless—unwise for the Rat to walk up to Barloff’s front door under the existing conditions!