Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

Was Jackson dead? Billy Kane shook his head. He did not know. A grim smile twisted his lips. He hoped not—not from any sympathy for the man, for the man’s punishment in that case had been almost too merciful a retribution, but because in Jackson was embodied the clue that would lead, if he, Billy Kane, escaped, to that day of reckoning that, cost what it might, he meant should come.

The van was in a narrow and ill-lighted street now. Marco’s was still two streets further downtown, but in the block ahead was the lane that, running north and south, passed the rear of Marco’s place.

Billy Kane sat suddenly upright on the tail-board of the van, the piece of sacking thrown now around his shoulders. If the driver happened to look around and see him, the supposition would be that he had hopped on to steal a ride; and if the driver ordered him off it mattered very little, since, in another yard or so anyhow, the van, as far as he was concerned, would have lost its usefulness. He leaned out, and glanced ahead of him up the street. There were a few people about, but not many, and none in the immediate vicinity of the lane that was now just at hand; but even if he were seen for an instant as he left the van, he would not be running any very great risk for he would be out of sight again before any particular attention could be riveted upon him; and, besides, in that miserable and sordid quarter a man might do many things out of the ordinary, for instance, dive suddenly into a lane and disappear, without exciting even passing curiosity or notice.

He jerked his slouch hat over his eyes, flung off the sacking, dropped to the ground, and slipped across the sidewalk into the lane. And now he was running again. He reached the next intersecting street, and was forced to draw back under cover to wait for an opportunity to cross unnoticed. And then the chance came, and he continued on down the lane on the opposite side of the street again.

Marco’s was the second store in from the next corner on the street that paralleled the lane, and halfway down he stopped running and began to move forward cautiously. It was very black in here, and he wished now that he had looked at his watch when he had had the opportunity; but it must be somewhere around ten o’clock. It was two hours, then, since he had overheard that telephone conversation in which Laverto had said that all he cared was that the man to whom he was telephoning should be away from Marco’s before a quarter of eleven.

Billy Kane was crouched now in the darkness against the back door of the second-hand shop. The chances were that whoever Laverto had been telephoning to had already been here and gone. Certainly two hours would have given any one ample time, and as Laverto had said that Marco did not keep open in the evening there would have been no cause for delay on that score.

He placed his ear to the panel of the door, and listened. There was no sound, and he tried the door. It stuck a little in spite of its broken lock, and gave with a slight squeak. Billy Kane drew in his breath sharply, and listened again. There was still no sound. He closed the door behind him, and crept forward, feeling his way with his hands along the wall in the pitch blackness. The flooring was old, and once it creaked under his foot, causing his lips to tighten rigidly, and his face to set in a hard, dogged way. He had no matches—they, in the match-safe that he usually carried in the ticket-pocket of his coat, were gone with the coat. A coat! All sense of absurdity in the length to which he was going to obtain so common-place an article as a coat had vanished. It was the one, final, ultimate, essential thing that he must and would have if he was to know a single chance for life. Without it he might as well throw up the sponge at once, but if his luck still held he would get one now. Marco’s stock of clothing would naturally be in the shop in front, and——

His hand dove suddenly forward into space, and he halted for an instant. He had come to an open doorway on his right. He felt around him in all directions. The passage seemed to end a foot or so ahead, and to lead nowhere but into what was probably the back room here at his side. The entrance, then, to the shop proper would be through the back room.

Again he moved forward, crossed the threshold, and again halted. It was dark, intensely dark, and he could see nothing; and it was still and silent, and there was no sound. But suddenly he found himself standing in a tense, strained attitude, his head thrown a little forward, his eyes striving to pierce the darkness. He could hear nothing, see nothing—but the sense of presence was strong upon him.

A minute passed, the seconds dragging out interminably—and he did not move. And then it seemed that close to him he caught a faint stirring sound. But he was not sure. It might have been his imagination. The silence, so heavy and prolonged, had taken on strange little noises of its own. Billy Kane’s lips thinned. He was bare-handed, wounded and unarmed, but he had a stake that he would fight for with a beast’s ferocity. And that stake was a coat! If there was anyone here, if it was more than his excited and wrought-up fancy playing tricks upon him, it was certain at least that it was not the police, for the police would have no incentive to play at cat-and-mouse, and therefore it was probably the man, not yet through with his work, to whom Laverto had telephoned; it was probably a fellow thief, fellow since he, Billy Kane, had also come to steal—a coat. Well, he would at least end the suspense! He turned in the direction from which he thought the sound, imaginary or real, had come, took a step forward—and stood still, hands clenched at his sides, as he blinked, through the ray of a flashlight that was suddenly thrown full in his face, at the round, ugly muzzle of a revolver that held a steady bead upon him on a level with his eyes.