Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

His lips pressed hard together. He had reached the door now, and now he crouched against it, his ear to the panel. He listened intently. A sudden doubt came and tormented him and obsessed him. What, if by any chance Peters had someone with him! A bead of moisture oozed out on his forehead, and he brushed it hurriedly away. He was not so callous now! Behind that door lay, literally, life and death; behind that door, if it proved necessary, he meant to take a man’s life, a miserable life, it was true, a murderer’s life, a life that had no claim to mercy, but still a man’s life. Had he ever laid claim to being callous? But that did not mean that his resolution was being undermined. The issue to-night was clearly defined, ultimate, final, and he had accepted that issue, and he would see it through. His lips relaxed a little in a smile of self-mockery. Well, suppose Peters were not alone he, Billy Kane, had only to wait until the visitor conjured up by his doubts had gone.

He steadied himself with a mental effort. His nerves were getting a little too high strung. To begin with, there wasn’t anybody in there with Peters. He would have heard voices if there had been, and he had heard none. He glanced around him now, but the act was wholly one of exaggerated caution. Here at the end of the hall he could see nothing. Opposite him was probably the door of the other apartment on this floor that Whitie Jack had said was unoccupied. There was no fear of interruption. He took his automatic from his pocket, tried the door cautiously, and finding it locked, knocked softly with his knuckles on the panel.

There was no response. He knocked again, a little louder, more insistently. There was still no response. Billy Kane was gnawing at his under lip now. Not only had Peters no visitor, but even Peters himself was not there! Out of the darkness it seemed as though a horde of mocking devils were suddenly jeering at him in unholy glee. He had somehow been very sure that everything to-night would go as he had planned, and, instead, there had been nothing so far but stark futility.

But the night was not ended yet! He thrust the automatic abruptly back into his pocket. There was still time for Peters to come. It was only a little after nine. And Peters would have a visitor after all—a visitor waiting there inside that room for him!

Billy Kane drew Whitie Jack’s bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket, and, crouching now low down in front of the door, inserted one of the keys in the lock. It would not work. He tried another with the same result. He was not an adept at lock-picking as yet! He grinned without mirth at the mental reservation—and suddenly drew back from the door, retreating into the deeper blackness at the end of the hall. Here was Peters now, and Peters would have much less trouble in opening the door!

Footsteps were ascending the stairs. A figure, in the murky light from the stair well, gained the landing, and came forward along the hall. Billy Kane’s sudden smile held little of humor. It was not Peters. It was Whitie Jack’s tenant of the third floor, Savnak, the old violin player, hugging his violin case under his arm, and as he came into the shadows, feeling out with his other hand for the banisters of the second flight of stairs. Fifteen feet away, flattened against the wall, himself secure from observation, in the darkness, Billy Kane, in a sort of grim philosophical resignation, watched what was now little more than a shadowy outline, as the other went on up the stairs to the third floor.

A door above slammed shut. Billy Kane returned to Peters’ door. Again he tried a key, and still another, until, with a low-breathed ejaculation of satisfaction, he finally unlocked the door. He exchanged the keys for his automatic once more; and once more his hand on the doorknob, he held tense and motionless, listening. From below there came again the sound of footsteps on the stairs. It was Peters at last, probably; but, if it was Peters, Peters was not alone. The footsteps of two men were on the stairs.

Futility again! The door was unlocked, but it availed him nothing at all now. He had meant to go in and wait for Peters, but it would be a fool play from any angle to go in there now if Peters had anybody with him. Nor was there time to lock the door again. He had returned the bunch of keys to his pocket, and it would take a moment to sort out the right one, and there was not that moment to spare. The footsteps were already on the landing. Billy Kane drew back once more silently and swiftly to the front of the hall. He was tight-lipped now. It seemed as though every turn of the luck had gone against him. Peters was certain to notice that the door was unlocked. What effect would that have on Peters? What would the man do, and——

Billy Kane was staring down the hall in a numbed, dazed way. Two men had come into the radius of light from the stair well, and were moving quickly along the hall in his direction. He brushed his hand across his eyes. That little horde of devils were at their jeers of unholy mirth again. Peters! There was no such man as Peters! Peters was a myth! The whole cursed night was a series of damnable hallucinations. This wasn’t Peters—it was Red Vallon, and Birdie Rose.

Out of the darkness he watched them, his mind fogged. What were they doing here? Why had they become suddenly so quiet and stealthy as they went up that second flight of stairs—where Savnak had gone! Savnak—Vetter—the diamonds—Red Vallon! He remembered the tribute paid to the Mole’s cleverness, a tribute that, in his estimation as an eyewitness to the theft, had come far from being borne out in practice. Was there something that he had not seen, something behind that bald, crude scene which he had witnessed? His brain was stumbling on, groping, striving for understanding. He remembered the code message—the Mole was to divert suspicion to someone else. Had the Mole in some way outwitted Red Vallon? Birdie Rose and Red Vallon obviously believed that the old violinist had the diamonds—there was no other possible explanation to account for their presence here hard on Savnak’s trail. And if that were so, it would go hard with Savnak, very hard, indeed, when, believing Savnak was lying, Red Vallon failed to secure the stones. Red Vallon was not a man to trifle with; Red Vallon was perhaps the most dangerous and unscrupulous gangster in New York, and——