“I am going now, Mr. Barloff, and I should advise you not to waste any time in taking whatever precautions you intend to take. You had better communicate at once with the police, and——”
Billy Kane swung himself over the fence, and stood there waiting in the lane. A minute, two, three passed, and then he caught the sound of a light step, and she stood before him in the darkness.
“Well?” she said curtly. “I am here, Bundy. What do you want?”
He was the Rat, alias Bundy Morgan, in her eyes, and it was the Rat who spoke.
“I heard you in there,” he said gruffly. “You’re going to beat it for the police, and wise them up about me. Well, you want to can that stunt, because I’ve got a little explanation to make. See?”
“You do not need to make any explanation,” she answered evenly. “My stupidity is at an end! That enigmatic little memo of yours was a better safeguard in itself than the hiding place in which you had secreted it, for I did not understand it until I saw a few lines in the paper this evening giving a short résumé of the Wop’s somewhat unedifying career, and stating that he had been released from prison. I was too late to save the Wop himself, but was not too late to prevent you from climbing in through that window, and carrying out the rest of your abominable scheme.”
“I went there to warn Barloff myself,” said Billy Kane.
She laughed icily.
“Do you expect me to believe that, after you have murdered a man so that you could put the onus of another crime upon him! This is the end to-night! I was mad to trust you at all. I was madder still to give you another chance, when I caught you playing a double game both with your own criminal associates and with me when you stole that letter from Dayler two nights ago!” She came a little closer to him. Both hands were tightly clenched. Her lips quivered a little; her voice choked. “I did not know what it was like to feel guilty of murder, to feel that one had taken another’s life. I know now. My folly in giving you a moment’s freedom has made me as guilty as you. But the end has come. Do you understand? You might put me out of the road, too, here in this lane, but that would not change the result any. You know that. You know in that case that the police would be after you anyway—that I have taken care of that. On the other hand, you may run for it now, and you may make it a question of hours, or a question of days, but as soon as the police lay hands on you your career is finished.”
There was a strange stirring within Billy Kane’s soul. She was very close to him, so close that he could see the pinched, haggard look in her face, and see the lips quiver again, and see the clenched hands rise to her eyes as though to shut out the abhorrent sight of him from her, and to shut out perhaps, too, the pictured sight of a man murdered, and for whose life she not illogically held herself accountable.