Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

“Get back to that table, and sit down there!” ordered the Rat curtly.

Billy Kane, because he had no choice, obeyed. It was like some weird, extravagant hallucination of the brain. He was looking up from his chair into what seemed to be his own face—only as he studied it now, fascinated by it, he saw what no mirror had ever shown him was a part of his own identity. The face was a little older, a little more drawn, and there was an expression in the eyes, a smoldering something, a devil’s malignity that burned out through the half-closed lids, leaving the pupils like fever spots behind. And he remembered now that she had commented upon the freshness of his face on that first night when they had met.

“You fool!” sneered the Rat suddenly. “So you played the Rat, did you? And did you think I didn’t know? Well, you seem to have liked it—Billy Kane—and so I guess you’d better finish out the act, and play it until the end. You can manage that, can’t you—say, for another ten minutes—until the Rat is dead!”

Billy Kane’s hands tightened on the table edge. It was not only the words, it was the eyes, and the face that were working now, that seemed to possess some deadly eloquence.

“What do you mean?” Billy Kane steadied his voice.

“It won’t take long to tell you,” said the Rat roughly. “You’ve been here long enough to know that apart from the old cobbler and his wife upstairs, who mind their own business and are always deaf when they don’t want to hear, this place is sound-proof to revolver shots. Well, the game is up to-night. Your game—and my game! I’ve got one or two little things to do here, and then I’m going; but I’m going to leave the Rat behind—dead.”

Billy Kane’s fingers began to drum a light tattoo on the table. It was strange that he could force his fingers to do that with an air of such apparent unconcern. He was laboring under no delusions. He was fully conscious that there was no bluff in the other’s words, that he was actually sitting there and facing death in the most literal sense of the term. The Rat’s reputation was quite enough in itself to make it certain that the man would not hesitate in putting his threat into execution. And then, besides, there were strange stirrings in his mind now that were not comforting things. The Rat, cognizant of it all the time, had deliberately let him, Billy Kane, play the role—and the drama was to end with the Rat’s death. It seemed horribly logical. It would let the Rat out of her clutches to-night, for instance, and leave only a dead Rat as prey for the police. He started involuntarily. Was that it? His fingers stopped their movements. Suppose he warned the Rat that the police were coming now? No! That would only cause the Rat to hurry—and to shoot the sooner. Well then, suppose the police found two Rats here? It would not save Billy Kane, but it would end the career of one of the most infamous scoundrels in the United States—and it would pay his debt to her! If he could only stave the man off a little, fence for time!

He could have laughed out wildly at the mocking irony of it. He was praying now for the police to come! She would lead them, or some of them, through that secret door, wouldn’t she?—though they would guard both doors, take no chances, even while they would hardly expect to find anyone here. The Rat was standing with his back to the secret door, and Billy Kane’s eyes swept past the other now in a well-simulated vacant, wavering way—and fell again upon the Rat.

The man was leaning a little farther over the table now, his lips parted in a vicious smile. It was as though, innate in the other, was an unholy joy to be derived from a victim’s plight, a joy that he sought to augment by making his victim writhe the more if he could.

“And so you played the Rat, did you?” The Rat was sneering again. “Well, you found out a lot more than was good for you, didn’t you? There was a woman, wasn’t there? Maybe she didn’t introduce herself because she thought you knew her well enough; but maybe you’re entitled to know something about her, because she’s one of the reasons why you’re going to snuff out in a few minutes.” His voice rose suddenly in a furious burst of blasphemy. “Blast her!” he snarled. “She went too far! She thought she could make me dance every time she cracked her little whip, did she? She’ll wish now, if there’s any wishing where she’s gone, that she’d stayed up on the Avenue with the rest of the swells where she belongs, and left her infernal, nosey charities on the East Side alone. Margaret Blaine—the banker’s daughter! Ha, ha! She had it in for me because a girl she was interested in down here went and jumped in the river. See? She swore she’d put me through one way or another for that. And then she stumbled on a pal of mine the night he croaked off, and found some papers on him that put me to the bad for fair. And that wised her up to a lot more. And then, curse her, she tumbled to the game here, and—well, I guess you know the hand she played.” He laughed raucously. “I guess you’d ought to! But you needn’t worry about it any more! She’s gone out—Billy Kane—understand? She went out—for keeps—at ten o’clock to-night.”