Came a wild cry now from both Vetter and Savnak from the front of the house; and then the two men, yelling at the top of their voices, both hatless, Savnak, apparently unconscious in his excitement that he was brandishing his violin frantically in one hand and his bow in the other, tore madly down the street in pursuit of their quarry.
Billy Kane slipped out to the street. Doors of tenements and houses were beginning to open; heads were beginning to be thrust out through upper windows; the street was beginning to assume a state of pandemonium. A block down, the quarry, well in the lead of the old Hollander and the violinist, leaped suddenly into a waiting automobile, and vanished around the corner.
Billy Kane turned away. He felt a curiously chagrined resentment against this so-called Mole, that was quite apart from his angry resentment of the fact that the old Hollander had been victimized. He had expected something quite different from the Mole! Red Vallon—and she, too—had given the Mole a reputation for cleverness, craft and cunning; but, instead of having shown any cleverness, or even a shred of originality, the Mole, or his minion, had perpetrated nothing more than a bald, crude theft that any house-breaker, or broken-down old “lag” could have pulled off with equal lack of finesse! Well, anyway, for the moment so far as he was concerned, the affair was at an end, and he could only await developments. It all hinged on Red Vallon now—on Red Vallon, who proposed in turn to rob the robber—on Red Vallon, who, later on, would keep an appointment with him, Billy Kane, in the Rat’s den!
As he turned a corner, Billy Kane consulted his watch. It was still early, just a trifle after eight—too early for that interview with Peters yet. He might as well go back to Two-finger Tasker’s then. It was scarcely likely that she was still there, but, if she were, so much the better! She could hardly hold him responsible for failure; and, in any case, she would realize that there was still the chance of recovering the stones by, in turn again, outwitting Red Vallon, if the gangster had been successful. If she were not there, Two-finger Tasker’s was as good a place as any in which to put in the time.
He reached the dance hall, and found, as he had half expected, that she had already gone. He sat down at a table, ordered something from the waiter, and, apparently absorbed in the dancers, who had now begun to gather, he made a sort of grimly-reassuring inventory of his equipment for the night’s work that still lay ahead of him—his mask, his automatic, Whitie Jack’s skeleton keys, were in his pockets. His lips twisted in a curious smile. The Mole, Vetter, the diamonds, the old violinist—all these seemed suddenly extraneous, incidents thrust upon him, dragged irrelevantly into his existence. They sank into inconsequential obtrusions in the face of the stake for which he was now about to play: his freedom, a clean name again, the end of this devil’s tormenting masquerade, his life or, perhaps, another man’s life—Peters’?
Half an hour passed. Once more he looked at his watch. A few minutes later he consulted it again. And then at a quarter to nine he rose from the table, and left Two-finger Tasker’s resort.
[XV—THE ALIBI]
Twenty minutes later, having satisfied himself that the immediate neighborhood was free of passers-by for the moment, and that he had not been observed, he tried the street door of the tenement that had been the subject of Whitie Jack’s earlier investigations. The door was unlocked, and he stepped silently into the vestibule, and closed the door softly behind him.
He stood for a moment listening, and taking critical note of his surroundings. A single incandescent burning here in the lower hall supplied ample illumination. The stairs were directly in front of him, and on the right of the hallway. There was a closed door, also on the right and just at the foot of the stairs, and from behind this there came the murmur of voices. There was no other sound.
He moved quietly forward, mounted the stairs, gained the landing, and, with more caution now, turned back along the hall, making for the door on the right—Peters’ door, according to Whitie Jack—that, if in the same relative location as the one below, would be at the foot of the next flight of stairs. A faint light came up through the stair well, but the end of the hall itself beyond the second flight of stairs was in blackness. He nodded grimly in satisfaction. He would not need any light to find Peters’ door!