Doors of the Night

by Frank L. Packard

“Will I?” inquired Billy Kane insolently. “Whats the lay? A trap?”

“No—an experiment,” she said evenly. “I would like to find out if there is really anything human, if there is a shred of decency left in you. I want you to see your crime for once from your victim’s standpoint. It may help you, if you are human, to keep on ‘playing the game’; and that will help you, if you can keep out of the clutches of the underworld, to keep out of the electric chair at Sing Sing. You quite understand, Bundy? At ten o’clock! And I should not even mind if you are found here in this room—in the dark—when Mr. Dayler and myself enter the house—at ten o’clock. And now I think you had better hurry, Bundy.”

There was a twisted smile on Billy Kane’s lips. He was the Rat, and the Rat would be here, or anywhere else at ten o’clock—if she said so. There was no comment to make. The Rat had no choice.

“All right!” he said gruffly, and moved past her to the door, and out to the hall; and a moment later, reaching the street, he swung into a hurried stride, heading back for the Rat’s den.

[XVIII—MIRRORED YEARS]

It was quite dark here in Dayler’s library, yet he had sat so long in this chair that his eyes seemed to have accommodated themselves to the darkness, and it seemed as though he could distinguish every object in the room. Surely, interminably as the minutes dragged themselves out, the quarter-hour that had stood between ten o’clock and the time he had sent the Cadger and Gannet away was up now! His flashlight winked through the blackness, played on the dial of his watch, and the blackness fell again. It still lacked five minutes of the hour.

Strange how his mind worked! There was no speculation as to precisely why she had demanded his presence here, there was only intolerant, angry impatience because she had done so. If it had not been for her, he could have been making vital use of every one of these minutes! There was nothing else to have hindered him! It had been almost childishly easy to pull the wool over Gannet’s and the Cadger’s eyes. He had let the Cadger and Gannet take all the initiative—apparently. The two men had forced the basement door, and then, going upstairs, had opened the front door for him, which he, strolling down the street a few minutes later, had entered as casually as he had already done before on two occasions that night. After that, the three of them, clustered around the mantel, the Cadger manipulating the dial of the safe while Gannet held the flashlight, had made the discovery in common that the safe had been already looted. He had joined in the dismay, chagrin and fury of his companions; he had joined in the frantic search of desks and drawers, which he had inaugurated, and which he had permitted to endure for a full half hour. At the expiration of that time he had coded a terse cipher report, and had handed it to the Cadger and Gannet for delivery. They were to leave the house, himself last, a few minutes apart in order to avoid arousing any attention; and the Cadger and Gannet, obediently and unsuspiciously, had gone. And he had remained!

It had been very simple. And there remained no trace of the search that had been made. His eyes now, so strangely accustomed to the darkness, reassured him on that score. He had warned the men not to leave any traces behind them!

He stirred uneasily in his chair. All this had been essential, necessary, vital, in order to preserve his rôle of the Rat from suspicion, and himself from subsequent and quick disaster at the hands of the underworld; but the minutes that were slipping away from him now, as he sat here impotent, were priceless. Red Vallon and the Pippin at any moment might run the Man with the Crutch to earth, and his hands were tied. He had no concern with the effect that the loss of the envelope might have had on this Dayler; he was utterly indifferent to either the contents of that envelope, or Dayler’s connection with it. It seemed to plumb the very depths of irony that she appeared to labor under the impression she might somehow, in this way, arouse his better nature and touch some softer human chord within him! He was concerned more with the connection between that envelope and the Man with the Crutch; and very much more with the contents of that handbag the Man with the Crutch had carried away from Peters’ flat the night before; and still more again with the Man with the Crutch himself! The man had tricked him here tonight, slipped through his fingers this time, but——

The front door was being opened. Billy Kane stood up, shrugging his shoulders. He was in a truculent mood now, impatient to be gone, prompted even now to go, restrained only by the cooler counsel of common sense. She had the whip-hand over him. A word from her, and he would be in exactly the same case as if he had failed in the play he had just made with the Cadger and Gannet. Voices reached him; hers, quiet and controlled; a man’s, gruff, irritated, sharply antagonistic.