Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

The—Rat! She—the girl they were talking about! The room seemed suddenly to swirl before Billy Kane’s eyes, the figures inside to become but blurred, jerky objects—and then it was black around him. Automatically he was stepping backward with a catlike tread; automatically he was feeling his way along the black hallway. And then the cool evening air fanned his face, and he was in the street.

[XXIV—AGAINST TIME]

Billy Kane put his hand to his forehead, and brought it away wringing wet with great drops of sweat. It had come like a blow without warning upon him, staggering him for an instant with horror—and then his brain had cleared as if by magic. It was cruelly clear now.

The girl that they meant to murder was—the Woman in Black. He had had no thought of that while they talked in there, not until Gypsy Joe had mentioned the Rat. And then it had seemed as though the pieces of a puzzle had been suddenly fitted together as by some unseen hand, and bare to his brain, naked, an ugly picture stood out in hideous perspective. He knew too well that the Rat had an incentive for getting rid of her. And he knew why. And it was she who had telephoned him, Billy Kane, to watch Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn to-night. Who else would know of anything afoot concerning those two except the “she” to whom Shaky Liz had told her damnable Judas story?

And he saw now why, and understood her instructions to him to watch Clarkie and Gypsy Joe. If she failed in her efforts through moral persuasion to prevent the Cherub from committing what she believed was to be a robbery, she still, through him, Billy Kane, could look for the recovery of the cash, and still keep the young hound, that she believed in and was trying to save, out of the hands of the police, and do it with a clear conscience since she would be in a position to return the proceeds of the theft. And then, too, perhaps, there had entered into her calculations the element of self-protection. She expected the Cherub to go alone, but if by any chance his pals went too, those pals were Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe—and he, Billy Kane, in that case, would be on their heels. And he understood, too, why she had not been more explicit over the telephone. She had not actually anticipated trouble, and she had respected her promise to the old hag to keep the Cherub’s name out of it.

He was running now, making across town in the direction of the East River. He did not know where Kegler’s dock or warehouse was, but Kegler was evidently a rather large dealer in sand, and any directory in the first drug store he passed would supply that information.

His mind worked on—curiously self-explanatory of his own actions. It had seemed pure impulse at the time that had prompted him to retreat so precipitately from the tenement; but he realized now that it was his brain subconsciously, but logically, at work. He, as the Rat, could not call in the police to raid that room where the inmates would denounce him as the author and instigator of the very crime for which he demanded their arrest; and to have gone into the room alone himself and have attempted to hold them up at the point of his pistol, while it might have been spectacular and dramatic, would have been little less than the act of a fool. It was not so easy for one man to hold up three others, to say nothing of a woman who was quite as abandoned, and certainly as full of trickery, and cunning, and resource as her male companions. There would have been, then, only one other alternative—to have gone in there coolly as the Rat, and call off the game that he was supposed to have started. But he had already learned that they had no love for the Rat, even though he was their employer in the present instance, and that secretly they were asking for nothing better than just such a favorable chance as that would be to “get” him, and to get, too, the large amount of cash that they credited him with having on his person.

His lips were tight, as he ran. He was conscious that he would not have hesitated to take the risk, to take any risk, if there had been no other way of saving her. But there was another way, a very much simpler, more common sense and natural a way; the way he was taking now. He had only to go to this Kegler’s dock where she would be waiting for the Cherub, and warn her. That was all. He had ample time if he hurried, since they had not started yet.

Time! Yes, he had time enough. Cool, deliberate reason reassured on that point, but the thought brought him a little panic-struck catch of breath. It might have been better, perhaps, if he had gone to the Bowery, or perhaps over into Lower Broadway, in the hope, say, of getting a taxi that would have saved him many minutes. He shook his head, and called himself a fool for allowing his mind to wander to inconsequent things. There were not many taxis hunting fares on the Bowery, and who ever heard of an empty taxi on Lower Broadway at this hour of night! And, besides, it was not half past nine yet, and she was not to be there until ten. And yet—time! He flirted the moisture from his forehead again, as, reaching a small drug store on a corner, he turned, and entered, and asked for the directory.

He was out again in scarcely a minute. He had found Kegler’s in the directory without difficulty, but not without certain new misgivings. Kegler’s was much farther along the East River than, somehow, and entirely without reason, he had imagined it would be. He began to run again, and again that twinge of panic seized him. True, he had a start on the others; true, they had just as far to go as he had, but with the distance that he knew now there was to cover, and the limit that existed in the time in which to cover it, it became more than probable they would have arranged for some special means of conveyance, whereas he had none.