The man dressed the wound with amazing deftness, stepped back to observe his own work admiringly, and then, picking up the folded shirt, shook it out, and began to unbutton it.
“Now den, Bundy,” he said, “get dis on, an’——” He stopped. From where it had been hidden in the folds of the shirt, a little black object dropped to the floor. Whitie Jack stooped, picked it up, glanced at it, and tossed it on the table. “An’ dat ain’t so dusty a place to hide it, neither!” grinned Whitie Jack. “Now den, up wid yer arms, an’ on wid de shirt.”
Billy Kane made no comment. The object Whitie Jack had picked up was a black mask. He raised his arms, and with deliberate difficulty struggled into the shirt.
“How d’youse feel now?” inquired Whitie Jack.
“Better,” said Billy Kane. “You’re an artist with the swab rags, Whitie.”
“Sure!” said Whitie Jack. “Well, I guess dat’s all. Youse go to bed now, an’ keep quiet. I’ll tip de fleet off dat youse are back on de job.”
Billy Kane shook his head sharply.
“I don’t want anybody butting in around here to-night!” he said roughly.
“No, sure, youse don’t!” agreed Whitie Jack, with an oath for emphasis. “Don’t youse worry, I’ll wise ’em up to dat. Dere won’t be nobody around here till youse says so—youse know dat, don’t youse? I ain’t never heard of any guy huntin’ trouble wid de Rat yet—an’ I guess dat ain’t no con steer!”
Billy Kane was standing up now. It seemed strange, almost incredibly strange that this man, one who evidently knew the so-called Rat intimately and well, had accepted him, Billy Kane, without the slightest suspicion that there could exist any question regarding his identity. He had been watching and on his guard all the time that Whitie Jack had been dressing his wound, but though Whitie Jack had seen him under the full glare of a flashlight, and again in this lighted room here, their heads close together as the other had bent over him, Whitie Jack was obviously possessed of no doubts that he, Billy Kane, was anyone other than the Rat! Well, it might be strange, but at least it was undeniably true; so true that now that vista, which he had glimpsed with Whitie Jack’s first words of mistaken recognition, was spreading out again before him, but more concretely now, opening a staggering possibility; so true that he dared not jeopardize anything by appearing too inquisitive about Marco’s, for instance—much as Marco’s was still in his mind! Marco’s! No, he was not through with Marco’s, for more reasons than one. There was some queer deviltry that Laverto was hatching there—at a quarter to eleven—and he meant to see it through. But, after all, even if he broached the subject again to Whitie Jack, who was patently only a tool in the affair, what more could Whitie Jack tell him, except the name of the man who had hired him to blow open an old safe whose contents were worthless—and that man’s name he, Billy Kane, already knew. No, he was not through with Marco’s! But he would gain nothing, save perhaps to excite suspicion, by speaking of it again to Whitie Jack.