“You!” he cried, and swayed at the table. And then passion seized him. “You hound of hell!” he shouted hoarsely. “The Man with the Crutch—it was you who killed David Ellsworth!”
“Sit down!” The Rat’s lips were thinned, merciless; the revolver edged forward. “Well, what about it! Why don’t you say Peters, too? You stuck your nose pretty deep into that!”
Billy Kane mechanically sank back in his chair.
“So you’ve got it, have you?” jeered the Rat. “Sure, the Man with the Crutch was me! And you, you fool, through your cursed interference with Red Vallon, put the police on my trail for Peters’ murder. Well, I’m going to let you be the Man with the Crutch too—as well as the Rat. That’ll let me out on both counts!” He stood the crutch up against the wall, and from the opening drew forth some clothes and flung them down beside the crutch. “Get the idea? This is the costume that goes with the crutch—sort of reserve stock. Understand? It wasn’t always convenient to come here as the Rat, or leave here as the Man with the Crutch—or the other way around, if you like. I’ll leave the stuff there where it’ll show up, and the police can put two and two together the same as you have. And that answers your question as to what is to become of me. I am a gentleman of several parts, and I can spare two of them. What’s left is none of your business, and anyway I’m getting tired of this, and I’m pretty near ready to go. But there’s one thing more—there were some rubies you were looking for, weren’t there, besides the ones you’ve been taking charge of and so kindly placed in that bag there a few minutes ago without giving me the trouble of making you hand them over?” Again his left hand, thrust back of him, sought the interior of the opening, and came out with a number of small plush trays piled one on top of another, the topmost flashing and scintillating now with its score of fiery, blood-red stones. “You were looking for these, weren’t you?” prodded the Rat, with a chuckle. “Well, you had ’em here with you all the time!”
Billy Kane was fighting desperately for self-control. Could they hear outside there? The man was condemning himself out of his own mouth! God, could they hear out there—did they understand that this man had murdered David Ellsworth, and that Billy Kane was clear! He met the Rat’s eyes with deliberate defiance now. More! Everything! The man must be led into telling everything—he had not told enough yet to make it sure—and perhaps they had not heard it all.
“And Peters,” he rasped out. “You killed Peters, too—Peters, who helped you kill David Ellsworth! Weren’t you satisfied with your share, that you had to steal his?”
The Rat had advanced to the table, and, setting down the trays, always with his revolver covering Billy Kane, had begun to pour the contents of one tray at a time into the open hand bag. He stopped now, and stared at Billy Kane in a sort of contemptuous surprise.
“So that’s the way you doped it out, is it?” he said, and laughed raucously. “And you’re kind to Peters, aren’t you? Peters, who wouldn’t harm a fly! I killed Peters because his evidence at the inquest finished Billy Kane for fair, and I didn’t want that evidence changed. It was me Peters saw coming down the back stairs and entering the library that night—only he thought it was you. Do you take me for a fool? I knew you’d see the report in the papers, and that, knowing there was something wrong about Peters’ story, you’d hunt Peters out and have a show-down, and that between you there was a chance of you getting at more of the truth than I wanted, and that Peters would then retract his evidence. Get me?
“I wasn’t for letting you out. I’d been banking on you to do a lot for me. The only guy that was in with me on that deal was Jackson—and he’s dead—just as the Rat is going to be. I spotted you long ago when you used to nose around here for that old fool who pitched his money away. I watched you quite a while before I was dead sure I could pass for you—and then I warmed up to Jackson. The rest was easy. We croaked old Ellsworth, and planted you. That gave me the coin I wanted to do what I was getting ready for—to pull out of this Rat’s game forever. It was getting too fierce with that cursed woman on my heels. So before I pulled the Ellsworth trick, I set things going to get her too, and passed the word around that I was going away for a while, so’s there’d be no chance of her tumbling to anything—and I stood pat as the Man with the Crutch. And then you acted like a Christmas tree shaking itself in my lap. There were a lot of things coming along with certain friends of mine, and with you playing the Rat and getting away with it, and with you there to stand for it if anything broke wrong, it looked like a cinch to nose them out at the tape on the little deals I’d started for them, and that would let me get away with the whole wad myself. See?”
The Rat was pouring the rubies from the trays into the hand bag again, his eyes glinting with a curious rapacious craftiness; and then, coming to one of the trays whose corner had been cut off, he laughed outright in a sort of self-complacent mirth.