Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

“You do not mean what you say!” the old Hollander replied, shaking his head reprovingly. “I know better! But I do not like to hear you talk like that. Things are not so bad with you now. You are moody. Play some more, my friend.”

“As you will!” Again Savnak shrugged his shoulders. He nestled his chin on the violin. “It will be something gay, then, and lively—eh, Vetter?—to chase the blue devils away.”

The notes of the violin rose again. Billy Kane began to lower himself from the fence into the backyard. His mind was made up now. Since there were two of them there, a warning surely was all that was necessary. The window was not much more than shoulder high from the ground, and he had, then, only to cross the yard and call to Vetter through the window. His appearance there would no doubt startle and alarm the old Hollander half out of his wits, but that was exactly what would cause the man to guard his diamonds all the more zealously for the rest of the night. Once warned, the two men in there between them ought certainly to be able to take care of themselves and that chamois pocketbook.

Billy Kane dropped softly to the ground, straightened up, took a step forward—and stopped as though rooted to the spot. There had come a cry from Vetter. The violin broke off with a jerky, high-pitched, screaming note. Then silence. Billy Kane raised himself on tiptoes. He could just see in through the window; no more. It seemed like some picture flashed on a cinema screen, quick, instantaneous. A third man, hat drawn far over his face, was standing by the table, covering Vetter and Savnak with a revolver. The man snatched up the chamois pocketbook, reached above his head, turned out the gas—and the room and window were in blackness.

It had happened with the suddenness and swiftness of a lightning flash, so quick that the brain stumbled a little in a dazed way in an effort to grasp its significance. And then Billy Kane wrenched his automatic from his pocket. The thief, when or in whatever way he had got into the house, must necessarily make his escape either by the front door, or by the back door and through the yard here. If it were the latter, which seemed the more likely, he, Billy Kane, had the man at his mercy; if it were the former, the man would probably reach the street, in any case, before he, Billy Kane, could get over the fence and rush down the lane.

Billy Kane was moving swiftly in the direction of the back door. He had to choose one way or the other. He could not attempt to guard both exits at the same time! If the man——

Vetter’s voice rose in a furious cry from the room:

“It is by the front, Savnak, he has gone! Quick! I hear him going out! Quick! The street!”

“Yes! Quick! The street!” Savnak, like a parrot, in a shrill, hysterical voice, was echoing the other’s words. “Quick! Chase him! And shout for the police!” A chair fell over. The two men were evidently floundering their way to the door. “Curse him for turning out the light!”

Billy Kane whirled, and dashed for the fence. As he straddled the top, he saw a figure, thrown into relief on the lighted street, speed past the head of the lane—and then, with a wry smile at a sudden realization of his own impotence, he dropped to the lane, and, instead of running now, made his way slowly and cautiously forward, hugged close against the wall. If he ran out of the lane into the arms of Vetter and Savnak, besides hampering the pursuit by distracting their attention from the fugitive, he invited the decidedly awkward and very natural suspicion of being connected with the thief himself; and the police would be very apt to listen with their tongues in their cheeks to any explanation that the Rat might offer to account for his presence in the lane at that particular moment! And if there was any one thing that he wished to avoid to-night, it was a complication with the police that would inevitably interfere with his freedom of action during the next few hours.