Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

He twisted a little on the bed—more in mental than in physical unrest. His wounded shoulder was still far from healed of course, but it gave him very little discomfort, and in no way interfered with his freedom of action—but it had been the safer way, this accentuating of his hurt, this pretended state of semi-helplessness. It had brought those he must know here to him; it had brought about those unsuspected introductions without which, had he first left this lair of the Rat’s and attempted, trusting to luck, to pick up the threads of the Rat’s life, would inevitably have plunged him in his blind groping to certain destruction. Also it had brought him a quite thorough understanding of Whitie Jack—the man’s deference that had been almost cringing at their first meeting, and then the man’s subsequent eagerness to serve.

Whitie Jack was one of the lesser breed that looked up to the heights the Rat had attained with both awe and unbounded admiration. The man had come like a dog to heel, but like a faithful dog. Whitie Jack was living in a sort of reflected glory—he would be the envy of the proletariat of the Bad Lands—he was associating now, was even on terms of certain intimacy, with one of those in high places in that inglorious commonwealth of crime to which, both by birth and inclination, he owed allegiance. It opened a new prospect to Whitie Jack, one that was full of dazzling possibilities—and it had made of the man an invaluable ally. Whitie Jack had been at once valet, nurse, surgeon and attendant all through the day. He had returned at daylight that morning, dressed the wound, and thereafter had not left the place except to go out and buy certain necessities, such as food—and a pocket flashlight, which Billy Kane, mindful of his previous night’s experience in the underground passage to the shed and lane, had ranked amongst those necessities as the first on the list.

Billy Kane shifted his position restlessly on the bed again. His mind was in a turmoil of feverish activity. It seemed as though a thousand divergent thoughts fought with each other to obtain undivided attention and recognition each for itself, and the battle went on incessantly. Who was the woman who had crept in here in the darkness through that secret door last night? What did it mean, that message she had written and left on the table? “So you are back, are you? Well, so am I! Remember!” There was something malignant, something ominous in that word—“remember.” Remember what? Why? What sinister thing was it that lay between her and the Rat—that he, Billy Kane, must now accept and stand sponsor for—since he was now the Rat!

The Rat! The Rat! The Rat! His brain was off again at another tangent. In Heaven’s name, who was the Rat? Where was the Rat at this moment? When would the Rat return? Guarded questions all through the day helped him little. The Rat’s absence had been accepted, that was all—none seemed to know, or have any interest in the cause of it. One ray of reassurance only had filtered through the murk. The Rat’s return in his, Billy Kane’s, person, had seemingly been premature, the Rat had seemingly not been expected; and he could argue from that, and with fair logic, that he might for a little while at least be left undisturbed in his possession of the Rat’s personality, and the Rat’s belongings—as far as the Rat was concerned. The Rat! Those innuendoes, those whispers, those shadows, that strange woman’s stranger message were back again, seething and boiling in his brain. Naked ugliness! What mess of iniquity was the Rat not mixed up in! And what mess of iniquity might not he, Billy Kane, accepted without question as the Rat now, with the Rat’s face and features, with the Rat’s satanic partnerships, be forced to wallow in to save his life, and, more than life, to——

The paper rustled in Whitie Jack’s hand.

“Some haul!” Whitie Jack rolled the words on his tongue like some sweet morsel. “S’help me! Five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of rubies! Dat guy Kane is some slick gazabo! Say, d’youse get it, Bundy? Five hundred thousand—an’ a bunch of de green stuff, too!” He licked his lips. “Some haul!”

The paper had exaggerated. David Ellsworth’s rubies at the outside would not exceed three hundred thousand dollars in value. Billy Kane found himself curiously and querulously irritated at the inaccuracy. He opened his eyes, nodded unconcernedly at Whitie Jack—and closed his eyes again. His mind was suddenly alert and concentrated. In a few minutes now some of those who composed that inner council of crime would be here. He had arranged that this morning—with Red Vallon. Red Vallon was the biggest gangster in New York. Whitie Jack had dropped that information in an enthusiastic eulogy of Red Vallon. And Vallon had bent over the bed that morning and whispered of a meeting to-night at the usual time and place. But he, Billy Kane, was not ready for that yet. He knew too little, it was too great a risk; and he knew too much—to escape alive, if a chance word or act betrayed him. But there had come a thought, swift, in a blinding flash, a staggering thing, a gambler’s stake, and he had whispered back what was apparently the obvious reply—that he was too badly hurt to go. And then: “One or two of you slip in here on your way over,” he had said quickly. “Get me? I’ve got something!” And Red Vallon had agreed—and with Red Vallon would come Karlin. Karlin! The name had somehow seemed familiar; but though Whitie Jack had subsequently furnished a partial clew by referring to Karlin as one of the high-brow lawyers of the city, he could not definitely place the man.

Billy Kane turned on his side, with his face away from Whitie Jack. Red Vallon and Karlin would be here in a few moments—and he must make no mistake now. What he meant to do was an impudent thing—impudent with a Titanic impudence. He meant to pit the underworld in a fight on the side of justice against the police. He meant to use the craft, the cunning and the stealth of the Bad Lands to establish his innocence. He too had read the papers—the morning and the evening papers—and the headlines had shrieked out at him the infamy of which he was accused. His name was a by-word now from one end of the country to the other. A viper and a degraded wretch, a thing inhuman and apart, the papers had called him.

He had read them all to the last word. Murderer of his benefactor! A thief—an assassin thief, who had fled for his life with those blood-red rubies! A bead of sweat came out on his forehead, and he raised his hand and brushed it away. Yes, he had fled—to fight—to take the only chance he had of bringing to justice the hell-hounds who had struck down his old friend, the only chance he had of clearing his own name.

Well, he would fight! It was beginning now, that fight. But he was between two fires that threatened him at any instant with destruction. The police, not only in New York, but from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would search ceaselessly for him, and if he were caught it was death. Fate, that had made him the double of a character that ironically seemed to measure up to everything the papers had said about himself, had thrown in that way a temporary mantle of protection over him, but let that mantle slip but ever so slightly and he would better a thousand times hand himself over to the law and have done with it—the end would be more merciful!