Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

[X—THE PIECES OF A PUZZLE]

Billy Kane made no effort to stop her, as she closed the door silently behind her. She was gone. The minutes passed, and he still sat there on the side of the bed, his eyes mechanically fixed on the spot, an innocent blank wall now, where she had disappeared. His face, hard and set at first, grew harder. What was he to do? There seemed to yawn before him, to have opened at his feet an abyss, bottomless, pitiless, and he tottered on the brink of it, and unseen hands reached up and snatched at him to drag him from the narrow ledge that was all that was left to him of safety. What was he to do? To go on? Every hour that he clung to this role of the Rat held a surer promise, not only of desperate peril to himself, but a promise that he would find himself launched in a sea of crime, of shuddering things, of murder, of blood, of sordid viciousness, of hate. In God’s name, who was this Rat, who in this hole here with its secret opening and its gnawed tunnel to the daylight made the pseudonym so apt!

He clenched his hands suddenly, and rising to his feet began to pace the room. He began to see now what, strangely enough, though it should have been plainly obvious all through that day, he had not seen until she, this unknown, mysterious woman, had, herself unconscious of it, made him see. Her power over the Rat to which he was subject in his assumed character, did not, in the final analysis, whatever the source of that power might be, materially affect the situation. It was not her threat that was the driving force that must actuate him. There was another and a far greater force which he could neither ignore nor escape. He saw that now. If the foreknowledge of proposed crime came to him, he was as guilty, if he stood idly by, as those who became the actual perpetrators of that crime. To-night, if there was to be murder done, and it was within his power to prevent that murder, or even if it were only within his power to attempt to prevent that murder—and he did nothing—he was a murderer himself. And so to-night he had no choice. He must act. It did not seem to him that there had been any question in his mind about this in a specific way at all from the moment she had spoken of murder. But afterwards—if he went on—the crimes that Red Vallon and Karlin and their confederates would plot, and that he would know of—what then?

He halted by the table, and laughed in a short, harsh way, and in the dark eyes there burned a sudden fire. Was there really any question about that, either? Had there ever been! He asked only one thing in life now, and to that everything else was subordinate—to feel his hands upon the throat of the man who had murdered David Ellsworth, and who had fastened that guilt upon him—Billy Kane—to wring from that man a confession that would clear his name. Nothing else mattered. He could run for it, discard this rôle of the Rat, and perhaps effect his escape, but he would thereby throw away almost every hope of bringing the guilty man to justice. The other way was to fight. Well, he would fight! It would be a good fight! And, as the Rat, he would not have to fight alone! If he accepted the chances as they stood, he must accept the risk involved in foiling the plots and crimes of those who thought him their confederate; but against this, the first step already inaugurated, he had the craft and cunning of the underworld at his back in the one purpose that meant anything to him now. It would be a good fight! If he failed, he might as well go out this way as any other—better this way, for then at least some of the projected deviltry would never know fruition. He drew in his breath sharply as in a sort of strange relief. It was settled now, once for all! He would go on—as the Rat—to the end. And to-night he would see this Merxler plot through to the end.

Billy Kane picked up the crumpled piece of paper she had dropped on the table, studied it for an instant, then placed it in his pocket. It contained the scrawled figures of a safe’s combination, nothing more. And now, glancing at his watch and finding that it was already a little after eight o’clock, Billy Kane worked quickly. The mask that had served him the night before was already in his pocket, as was his revolver. To these he added the electric flashlight that Whitie Jack had procured for him that morning, and, from where they dangled in the lock of the door, Whitie Jack’s bunch of skeleton keys. He extinguished the light; then passing out through the secret door, which he closed carefully behind him, he made his way quickly through the little underground passage, gained the shed through the trap-door, emerged on the lane, and from there, cautiously, he reached the street.

He walked rapidly now, but keeping always in the shadows, shunning the direct rays of the street lamps. He cared nothing for the police; his danger did not lie in that direction. Seen anywhere in the city by either police or plain-clothes man he would be recognized, not as Billy Kane, but as the Rat—and the authorities, he was fairly well satisfied, had no particular or immediate interest in the Rat. His danger lay to-night in an unlucky recognition by some prowler of the underworld, the report of which might reach the ears of Red Vallon and his crowd. Supposed to be confined to bed, pleading physical inability to take his place at that unhallowed council board of which he was accepted as a member, it would be very awkward to explain his presence on the street within half an hour after Red Vallon and Karlin had left his room! To-morrow, the day after, it would be a different matter, he could go and come then as he pleased, but to-night it multiplied his difficulties and his dangers a thousandfold. And yet, after all, that was the most simple of the problems that confronted him—with luck, he could see his way out of that. But for the rest, he was almost like a blind man groping his way along in what was already near to an inextricable maze. He knew something of Merxler both by sight and hearsay, he knew where Merxler lived, that there was a will in the safe which he must secure, that he possessed the combination of the safe, and that afterwards there was “the back door of Jerry’s before ten,” which referred undoubtedly to the notorious gambling hell of that name, and that in these fragments, once pieced together, there was murder—that was all he knew. And there was something grim, and horribly ironic, and mocking, and something forbidding, and ominous and premonitory in the fact that he was supposed to know all!

The street for the moment in his immediate vicinity was deserted, and just well enough within the radius of a street lamp to enable him to see, he drew the package of money from his vest pocket that the old millionaire had confided to his keeping the night before. He selected several bills of the smaller denominations, placed them in his trousers’ pocket, and returned the package to the inside pocket of his vest. Thank God for the money! He had enough in the bank twice over to replace this two thousand that now belonged to the Ellsworth estate, but he could not get it! He was a fugitive from the law! But this should see him through—by the time two thousand was exhausted he must either have won or lost. He smiled a little bitterly. Win or lose, the estate at least would get its two thousand back! If he won, he would pay it back himself; if he lost—well, his money in the bank had probably already been attached!

And now he retreated to the shadows of the buildings again as he went along. His surreptitious excursion from the Rat’s den last night had, to one who knew the East Side as intimately as he knew it, supplied him with a mental map, as it were, of the neighborhood in which the Rat had chosen to reside. A block further on was The Purple Scarf, a so-called Bohemian restaurant and dance hall, as lurid as its name, that for the moment was the craze with the slummers and those of New York’s upper strata who aped all things Bohemian—and from early evening until early morning a line of taxis waited to snatch their share of the spoils from the free-handed and, quite often, hilarious clientele. It was a taxi that he wanted—without attracting any unnecessary attention to himself—a taxi that he could not stand on a crowded thoroughfare and hail—and there was, as usual, a line of them there now in front of the restaurant.

He reached the corner, drew his hat far down over his eyes, stepped out into the street, and approached the last taxi in the line from the side away from the curb. The chauffeur was nodding in his seat. Billy Kane touched the man on the arm.

“I want to go up to the Nineties—Broadway—probably several places after that,” said Billy Kane pleasantly.