“Where did you get it?”
“That is my personal and private business,” he wrote. The ring was a peculiar signet he had picked up abroad and had worn for years.
The woman dropped the chalk to the floor. She raised one hand as if to put it to her face; she dropped it again; her eyes burned into Verbeck’s from behind her mask; then she gave a cry that expressed pain and despair, and hurried through the door and into the hall.
“Well, what do you think of that?” Verbeck mused. “Was she really frightened or only playing a part? I wonder if the Black Star has been treating her badly and has made her afraid of him? She seemed awfully interested in my ring—because she’d never noticed it on the Black Star’s hand, I suppose. If she should be suspicious—— But she couldn’t do anything if she was!”
The members of the band continued to arrive at intervals, but there were no more women. Verbeck received their numbers and countersigns, and gave out copies of the orders. At three o’clock in the morning he decided there were no more to come. Two women and eight men had been received during the night—ten persons had walked into the trap he had constructed. Less than twenty-four hours, and the Black Star and his band would be in the hands of the police. Verbeck felt that he had planned well.
At half past three o’clock he left the house and walked five blocks to catch an owl car. Half an hour later he was on the boulevard, approaching the building in which he had his rooms. As he reached the steps of the apartment house he happened to turn and glance down the street. He saw a man dodge behind a lamp-post a short distance away.
Verbeck stepped into the vestibule, waited a moment, then stepped out again quickly. Again he saw the man dodge behind the post.
Darting down the steps, Verbeck ran toward the man. A shadowy form rushed across the driveway and lost itself in the shadows of the underbrush. Verbeck stopped and retraced his steps. He doubted whether he could catch the man, and he wasn’t inclined to pursue him at that hour of the morning. Perhaps it was not a man watching him, but a lurking thief, he thought, and at the same time he felt that he had been under surveillance.
[CHAPTER VIII—THE POLICE GET A TIP]
Verbeck arose at noon to face the day that meant the culmination of his plans. As he bathed and shaved and dressed he kept thinking of the prowler he had seen a few hours before. Could it be possible, he asked himself, that some of the Black Star’s band had grown suspicious and would take an active part against him? Had the Black Star, a prisoner in the old Verbeck house, sent out some message from his prison calling for rescue? Verbeck was half afraid he had made some blunder, had overlooked something that would allow the master criminal to turn the tables and emerge victor from the duel of wits.