“All right!” said Karlin. “Good work, Bull! Beat it, now!”
The man turned, and left the room. Billy Kane heard him step across the yard, heard him climb the fence, heard Karlin within the room close the shuttered French doors—but this time Billy Kane made no movement, save that there was a curious twitching of his face muscles as his jaws locked together. All the bald, hellish brutality of the scheme was beginning to take form now in his mind. It was a plant, all of it, the letter, the will; a plant with the devil’s stamp of ingenuity upon it—and it was the man who had just gone from the room, Bull McCann, who had passed him on that black stairway from the basement in Merxler’s home!
Karlin was laughing in a viciously jubilant way, as he came back to the ex-croupier’s side.
“Fifty thousand dollars!” said Karlin, as he thrust the securities into the inside pocket of his coat, and patted the pocket complacently. “Fifty thousand, Jerry, and all of it in Theodore Rodger’s name—I kept stalling the kid on the idea of transferring the securities into his own name—told him there was no hurry—that he could clip the coupons and get the dividend checks through all right, just the same. I was his attorney too—see? Works pretty smooth, eh, Jerry? Too bad you didn’t get a chance to have a look at that letter and the will! The Chipper did the job, and they’re the best pieces of forged penwork that were ever pulled in America! Some head the Rat’s got, I’ll give him credit for that—he worded the letter. It’s prima facie evidence that the kid was blowing the coin just as fast as he did when he came into his father’s money—and nobody’s surprised that most of it has gone up in smoke. And, besides that, it’s a confession. Well, what happens? Merxler is killed in a gambling brawl—at which nobody is surprised, either!—his safe is opened, the will is found, and with it that little hymn of hate against me, which accounts for what would otherwise have been a fool play in having kept the will. I am found to be the executor, empowered to transfer and sell, and administer the estate—and we find that all that’s left is about ten thousand—which is all I have to account for. I enter that as the value of the estate, split it up among the beneficiaries, and”—he chuckled softly—“I generously waive my claim to any share in the legacy on the score that the estate has been so hard hit. Neat little play, eh, Jerry? Well, after that, there’s nothing to it! My signature is legally good on any document, and little by little, here and there, we turn the fifty thousand into the long green—and pocket it. If it’s done quietly, a security or so at a time, no one would ever think of digging around to find out if it was one of those on the schedule filed by the estate. Feeling better, Jerry?”
The ex-croupier walked over to the buffet, poured out for himself a stiff four fingers of whisky, and tossed off the neat spirit at a gulp. He forced an uneasy grin.
“I don’t often drink in business hours,” he said nervously. “But I’m not used to playing this high—maybe I’m a little shaky. Are you sure-fire on the witnesses to that will? Their signatures would have to be proved.”
“They’re the only things that are genuine,” said Karlin, with a malicious laugh. “We had two of our boys working around the hotel down on Long Island where Rodgers spent a month this spring, and where he is supposed to have written the will. They identify their signatures, and their story’s straight. Rodgers asked them to witness his signature to a paper, that’s all. He didn’t tell them what the paper was, and they didn’t know—see? If there’s any question crops up, the hotel proves that the two men were its employees at the time Rodgers was staying there.” He pulled out his watch again. “It’s ten o’clock!” he said brusquely. “Merxler ought to be showing up. I——”
The ex-croupier had suddenly laid a finger to his lips in caution. A knock was sounding on the hall door.
“Here he is now,” said the ex-croupier, in a lowered voice. “I told them to send him here as soon as he came.”
“All right, let him in,” instructed Karlin. “And tell the boys to drift along as soon as they like. It’s the man who cuts the first jack.”