Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist Part 21

"That's what I done," said the burglar, "and as I was slipping down, I framed it for the guy. I wouldn't hold him up in front of the house; there were too many lights and too many chances to take. I'd wait till I got him in a street that was darker, and had more get-aways."

"What about the woman?" asked Bat. "Was she hurt much?"

"No," replied Big Slim. "While I was thinking what I'd do--after the fellow blew with the diamonds, I was still looking into the room. She held her hand to her face for a moment as if it'd hurt her pretty bad; then she took it away, and"--here the speaker grinned widely--"well, maybe it was a good thing for friend husband that he wasn't there just then. She'd a look on her face that was equal to anything."

"Humph!" said Bat. "I don't wonder."

"And she didn't take it all out in looks," said Big Slim, with the grin still upon his cadaverous face. "I seen her burst right out wild; she pulled open a drawer and took out something--I couldn't see just what it was, but I caught a s.h.i.+ne from it and I'd bet my head it was a gun. She put it in her breast; then she grabs up her wraps and things and tears out of the room."

"After him!" Bat stared at the other, a feeling of weakness creeping over him.

"Like a shot. When I got to the bottom of the scaffold I stayed in the shadows till he came out; when he got a little distance away, I was just going to follow, when the door opened again and she came out."

"And she dogged him," said Bat. "You are sure of that, are you?"

"Sure?" Big Slim chuckled as he looked at Bat, his head nodding affirmatively. "I should say I am. It was a double shadow. There she goes, down the street after him; and there I am, after her, just as nice as you please."

CHAPTER XIII

SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

The food at Joey Loo's lost its savor for Bat Scanlon. He felt cold, and his mind was sodden; a weight seemed to oppress his chest. The picture limned by the desperado was as plain to him as though it had been done in fire.

He saw the callous, ruthless Bounder, all smiles and sneers, strike Nora and s.n.a.t.c.h her jewels. He also saw the beautiful, high-strung and high-spirited creature, her senses drowned in resentment, s.n.a.t.c.h up a weapon and rush after him, all the wrong she had ever suffered at his hands flaming up in her mind.

"And so she followed him; and this hyena followed her," was Scanlon's thought. "And in the end they all brought up at Stanwick."

Why Nora and Big Slim had gone to the suburb was easy to understand; they had followed the Bounder. But why had that gentleman gone there?

What had taken him there--a place he had never visited before--and so late in the night? That he _had_ gone there had been only too tragically proven; and the footprints found by Ashton-Kirk gave mute testimony as to the other two. And then there was that s.h.i.+ning thing the burglar saw Nora place in her bosom. With a sickening readiness, this a.s.sociated itself with the glittering little weapon which the investigator had picked up on the lawn.

Bat blundered on with his food, for all these things were huddling up in his mind in a frantic ma.s.s. And, then, as if the tangle were not already bad enough, there came the remembrance of the scene he had observed through the windows at Bohlmier's hotel.

"I don't know what that was about any more than the rest," Bat told himself. "But there was something between it and the things this fellow has just been telling me. If I knew what they were----"

He looked at Big Slim and found the green eyes of the burglar regarding him curiously.

"You don't bat very high in the eating league, do you?" said the man.

"Or maybe you ain't crazy about the c.h.i.n.k brand of grub."

"I'm kind of off it," said Bat. "But don't let me stop the good work for you. I'll have a few drags at a cigarette and we can talk just the same."

He waited for a few moments, hoping the desperado would resume where he left off. But when Big Slim once more began to talk, he did so in a reflective vein, removed from the direct course of the story.

"Things do take funny twists," said he. "Funny twists! One minute you think you've got 'em, and the next they're dipping in behind the scenery."

"I've noticed peculiarities like that myself," confessed Bat. "The good things I've seen coming my way would stock a novel with incident. But the number that broke right for me ain't been so many as to cause me to worry. They have a habit of heading off before they get to the plate, just as you say."

"To have a quart of diamonds all but wrapped up for you--and then to miss them--that's rough."

"I should say it was," agreed Bat. "But," rather carelessly, "how did it turn out? Did the girl get 'em back?"

Big Slim finished with the food and pushed back his plate. Then he took out a tobacco pouch and a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette. Blowing a long stream of smoke into the wet air of the cellar, he said:

"I've let you in on this a little because I think you're a good fellow, and I wanted to show you that I didn't throw Allen down cold. See? But this job ain't over yet, and I don't talk much about things that ain't done--for I've seen too many of them spilled that way." He took another long draught of smoke down into his lungs and exhaled it. "I figure on coming out right on this thing; do you get me? But I ain't saying anything more."

Bat weighed the matter carefully. He saw a sort of settled expression on the thin lips of the burglar, and this told him there was little to be hoped for by questioning.

"And I may get him suspicious of me," reflected the big man. "It doesn't take much to get these phony guys putting their ears up and listening for alarms. And if that once happens here my chance is gone."

So he said nothing more on the subject, though all the time he was burning to do so. The talk drifted into other channels, and in the course of a half hour Big Slim, looking at the clock, said:

"I'm sorry, bo, but I'll have to pull my freight. I'm going to see if I can't put some things right to-night."

Bat arose with him, a feeling of quick expectancy beating in his mind.

"To-night," he repeated to himself. "Put some things right? Well, that means only one thing to me."

They left Joey Loo's together and walked along the street. At almost any corner Bat expected the burglar to leave him, but to his surprise this did not happen; the man went with him back to the hotel. In the little office with the sanded floor, Big Slim said:

"Well, see you to-morrow, maybe, bo."

Bat waved a hand and the cracksman disappeared through a door upon which was painted the word "Private." Through his inspection of the hotel, inside and out, during the day, Scanlon had gotten a fair idea of its plan.

"That door," he told himself, "will take him to the rooms where I saw him with Bohlmier and Nora last night. It might be just as well----"

At once he was at the desk and demanded his key of a thick-necked young man who wore a narrow stand-up collar; in the course of a few minutes he was in his room and had taken a station at one of the windows.

The flare of light came from below--from a single window this time--and there sat Bohlmier in a round-backed chair, with Big Slim resting against the table edge and swinging one leg. The burglar was explaining something very carefully, and the old Swiss was listening, his face upturned and the gas light gleaming on his heavily rimmed spectacles.

"Whatever it is," said Bat, "the old party agrees without a qualm." He watched the two for a s.p.a.ce and shook his head. "A badly joined team, as far as looks go," he mused, "but if the feeling they give me counts for anything, their work would be as smooth as the devil's own."

Old Bohlmier arose finally and went to an old chest that stood in one corner. Throwing back the lid of this he took out, one by one, a number of tools and laid them side by side on the table.

"A cracksman's outfit!" murmured Bat, a feeling of disappointment running through him. "It's only Big Slim going out on a 'job,' after all."

The lank burglar examined the appliances upon the table and nodded his approval of them, after which he stowed them away in a small cloth bag.

Then he and Bohlmier prepared to go.

"h.e.l.lo!" said the big athlete. "The Swiss is going, too!" His face lit up with renewed interest. "It must be more than just a plain job of burglary, after all."

Quietly he slipped from the room and locked the door; and then with a careless air he left the hotel. Reaching the shadow of a building across the way he stood and waited; in a few moments Big Slim and Bohlmier emerged at the side door and after a furtive look up and down the street, they started away. After them, on the other side, went Scanlon, treading cautiously, so as to make his progress as soundless as possible, and keeping well in the overhang of the buildings. He expected a long journey in the wake of the two prowlers; but at the end of a half dozen blocks he was pleased to find that this was not to be the case. They stopped before a sort of loft building, and, in the shadow of this, held a conference. From the mouth of an alley Bat watched them; then, with a feeling of consternation, he saw they were advancing toward him.

"They've spotted me!" was his first thought; but in a moment he realized that this could not be so; the darkness where he stood was too intense for them to have made him out. A second thought was illuminating; the building beside which he stood was to be the scene of their effort. He shrank back into the alley. Overhead was a tangle of fire-escapes; dozens of windows, some of them broken and with paper and old clothes stuffed into the openings, looked down upon him.

"A burglary in such a place as that!" Bat stood aghast at the idea.