Billy Kane’s eyes stole to the secret door again. He remembered the fascination with which he had watched it slowly open on the night he had lain there on the bed, and Karlin, in the hands of the police now, had sat at the bedside, and Red Vallon had been here at the table. And it seemed now as though the door moved again as it had moved that night. But he could not be sure. Perhaps it was his imagination that was father to the wish—and he dared not look steadily, or too long in that direction.
He brushed his hand across his eyes. He understood well enough now why the Rat had been indifferent to what Shaky Liz, or the Cherub, or any of them, might hold over him—there would be no Rat, if he, Billy Kane, in the Rat’s stead, were murdered. And the Rat believed, of course, that she—her name was Margaret—Margaret Blaine—that she was dead. But he, Billy Kane, was playing for time, wasn’t he? And the Rat, in his hideous propensity for a cat-and-mouse game, seemed quite willing to talk.
“You killed her!” Billy Kane’s ejaculation was one of stunned incredulity. “But—but she threatened me, when she thought I was you, by saying that if anything happened to her the evidence against you would be produced just the same.”
“Sure, she did!” leered the Rat. “In twenty-four hours after her disappearance. And it’ll be twenty-four hours all right before they have any proof of that. It wasn’t pulled off where a howl would go up ten minutes after she snuffed out! Sure, in twenty-four hours! Well, I’m in no hurry, am I? In twenty-four minutes the Rat—that’s you—won’t need to care what busts loose! It’ll save me a lot of trouble if they find the Rat sprawled out on the floor with a bullet through him, won’t it?”
The door! Had it moved inward a bare fraction of an inch, as it had that other night? There would have been time by now, just time, for her and the police to have got here. Was that a widening crack along that panel there—or only a shadow flung with taunting malice by the murky light? No—it moved now! He was sure of it. It moved!
He forced himself to laugh in a short, nervous way.
“I don’t see how that lets you out,” he mumbled. “What’s to become of you if the Rat’s found dead?”
The Rat was moving back from the table to the side wall of the den.
“I’ll show you,” said the Rat, with an ugly grin. “And don’t move—you understand? I’m a dead shot, and I’m not risking anything by being a few feet farther away. You’d only go out a little sooner, and miss something that’ll maybe sweeten your last moments—see?” His revolver still covering Billy Kane, he raised his left hand and pressed against the wall. A small panel door swung outward. “There’s nothing in there!” mocked the Rat. “That’s the secret she was forever talking about having discovered, and that’s the place she looted all right, and where she got the dope about a lot of our plans, and kept me from wising up the crowd about it in order to save my own skin. But there’s a thing or two she didn’t know.” His hand crept farther along the wall, and pressed suddenly against it again, and now a full board-length of the panelling slid away. Something metallic fell with a thud to the floor—and then Billy Kane was on his feet, clinging with a fierce, unconscious grip to the table.
He had forgotten the police and that secret door at the far end of the room, forgotten the peril in which he stood, forgotten that ugly black muzzle of a revolver in the other’s hand. His mind and brain seemed to be reeling. Some inhuman devil’s trick was being played upon him. That was one of those iron crutch shafts, painted to resemble grained wood, that the Rat was picking up—yes, and fitting it now with deft, accustomed fingers to the armpiece! The Rat—the Man with the Crutch—the murderer of David Ellsworth—the man whose very rôle he had taken upon himself and played!