Doors of the Night Part 16

"I quite understood!" Billy Kane forced a sarcastic smile. "You are almost too considerate!"

"Am I?" she said. Her eyes flashed suddenly. "Well, perhaps you are right! I have thought sometimes that even the chance I give you is more than you deserve. I feel so strongly about it, in fact, that the only thing which prevents me from putting an end to it-and you-is that by using you to defeat the ends of your own criminal a.s.sociates a great deal of good is being done. They will trap you sometime, of course, and, knowing them, you know what will happen, and I am satisfied then that, as an alternative, you would prefer Sing Sing and the chair; but you are clever-that is why you grasp at the chance I give you. You are extremely clever-and you believe you can continue to outwit them indefinitely. I don't think you can, though I admit your cleverness, cunning and craft."

"You flatter me!" said Billy Kane ironically.

"No," she said, her voice suddenly lowered, pa.s.sionate, tense; "I hate you."

"You told me that last night." Billy Kane indolently blew a ring of cigarette smoke ceilingwards. "I am beginning to believe you. Did you follow Red Vallon in here to tell me the same thing again?"

She did not answer for a moment.

"Sometimes you make me lose my faith in G.o.d," she said, in a slow, restrained way. "It is hard to believe that a G.o.d, a just G.o.d, could have created such men as you."

Billy Kane removed his cigarette from his lips, and flicked the ash away with a tap of his forefinger. He felt the color mount and tinge his cheeks. There was something, not alone in her words, but in her tone, that struck at him and _hurt_. The brown eyes, deep, full of implacable condemnation, burned into his. What was it that the Rat had done to her, or hers? He turned slightly away. An anger, smoldering in his soul, burst into flame. He was the Rat by proxy-and the proxy was d.a.m.nable. He could not tell her he was not the Rat. He could not tell her he was-Billy Kane. He must play on with his detestable role! He must play the Rat. What answer would the Rat have made to her?

"Cut that out!" rasped Billy Kane.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I spoke impulsively. There are only two things in life that affect you-your own safety, and to be quite sure that you get all of your share out of your crimes, and, if possible, somebody else's share as well. But the latter consideration is at an end now, isn't it, Bundy? I think I have taken care of that. It's just a question of whether you can save yourself or not with those clever wits of yours.

Well"-she shrugged her shoulders suddenly-"you did very well last night.

His life would not be worth very much if the underworld should ever lay hands on the man in the mask. Would it, Bundy?"

He did not answer her.

"Yes, you did very well, indeed," she went on calmly. "You will meet somewhere else, of course, as soon as you can find a suitable place, but you will hold no more of your secret council meetings at Jerry's for some time to come."

Billy Kane's face was impa.s.sive now. He was apparently intent only on the thin blue spiral of smoke that curled upward from the tip of his cigarette. So those meetings of that cursed directorate of crime had been held at Jerry's, had they? He had not known that.

"Suppose," suggested Billy Kane, curtly, "that we come to the point.

What is it that you want to-night?"

"I am coming to the point," she answered levelly. "Owing to the events of last night your organization is in confusion, some of the more faint-hearted of your partners have temporarily even taken to their heels; but, even so, the organization's activities can hardly come to an abrupt standstill. You will perhaps remember a somewhat similar occasion once before? There are perhaps certain matters that are imperative, that cannot wait. Is it not so, Bundy? And in such an emergency it is left to-shall we call him the organization's secretary?-to keep things going.

Personal touch is lost with one another, but there is still a way. I know, it does not matter how, that Red Vallon received a written order a little while ago. I followed Red Vallon here. I _think_ he gave that order to you."

Billy Kane looked at her for a moment, a quizzical, whimsical expression creeping into his face. She was in deadly earnest, he knew that well.

And yet there was a certain sense of humor here too-a grim humor with something of the sardonic in it, and nothing of mirth. Red Vallon's code order was quite as meaningless to him as it would be to her!

"Sure!" said Billy Kane, alias the Rat-and chuckled. "Sure, he gave it to me! You don't think I'd hold anything out on _you_, do you? Sure, he gave it to me!" He tossed the paper across the table toward her. "Help yourself! All you've got to do is ask for anything _I've_ got, and it's yours. You're as welcome as the suns.h.i.+ne to it."

She studied it for an instant calmly. Billy Kane, watching her narrowly, frowned slightly in a puzzled way. She appeared to be neither agitated nor confused. She raised her eyes to his, a glint half of mockery, half of menace, in their brown depths.

"Did you think I did not know it was in cipher?" she inquired coldly.

"You would hardly have been so obliging otherwise, would you? It is always in cipher under these circ.u.mstances, isn't it? Well, what is the translation?"

"Red Vallon didn't tell me," said Billy Kane complacently.

"Quite probably not!" she countered sharply. "It was hardly necessary, was it? But since you have decoded it yourself?"

Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders.

"I've been away so long," he said, "that I've forgotten the key."

"Really!" She was smiling at him in derision now. "In other words, you refuse to tell me what it is."

"Don't you think you expect a little too much from me?" He forced a sudden roughness into his tones. "I haven't decoded it yet, as a matter of fact; but if I had, do you think I'm looking for trouble-to give you the chance to force me into another mess?"

She shook her head in a sort of mocking tolerance.

"Does it really matter, Bundy?" she asked softly. "You are not as bright this evening as usual. I know that some crime is planned and set forth here on this paper. It really makes no vital difference to me to know beforehand specifically just what that crime is, for if it succeeds I shall know about it, and, in that case, I shall equally know that you did not prevent it. I think you quite understand what that means, don't you, Bundy? However"-she smiled again, as she opened her purse and took out a pencil-"let us put it down to a woman's insatiable curiosity, if you like, and decode it together."

Decode it! The twisted smile that came to his lips was genuine enough.

He couldn't decode it. He had only one card to play-a flat and unequivocal refusal.

"Nothing doing!" he snarled.

"Oh, yes, I think there is," she said softly again.

He stared at her. Her pencil was flying across the paper. Who was this woman? She knew the key! Was there anything that she did not know? He watched her in a stunned way, his mind in confusion. And then he leaned forward to observe her work more closely. Beneath the original cipher she had written this:

ziduve sfuufw efwjfdfs uofnohjtopd teopnbje ofu eobtvpiu tsbmmpe zbepu npsg nbesfutnb fwbi opjubnspgoj fiu fmpn tj hojzbm b uobmq pu ufh nfiu uihjopu offxufc uihjf eob fojo lpmdp eob usfwje opjdjqtvt pu fnpt fop ftmf ovs fiu fmpn pu iusbf eob flbn nji ihvpd qv.

"It is so simple, Bundy," she murmured caustically. "The numerals to designate the number of letters in the words, the transposition of 'a'

for 'b', and so on, and the words spelled backwards. It is so simple, Bundy, that it is strange you should have forgotten-and forgotten that there are other secrets I have found in that den of yours, apart from that very convenient and ingenious door!"

She was working as she spoke, paying no attention to him. He made no reply, only watched her as she set down a second series of letters:

yhctud rettev deviecer tnemngisnoc sdnomaid net dnasuoht srallod yadot morf madretsma evah noitamrofni eht elom si gniyal a tnalp ot teg meht thginot neewteb thgie dna enin kcolco dna trevid noicipsus ot emos eno esle nur eht elom ot htrae dna ekam mih hguoc pu.

A moment more, and she had written out the message in plain English:

Dutchy Vetter received consignment diamonds ten thousand dollars to-day from Amsterdam. Have information the Mole is laying a plant to get them to-night between eight and nine o'clock, and divert suspicion to some one else. Run the Mole to earth and make him cough up.

She was studying the paper in her hand. Billy Kane lighted another cigarette. He was still watching her, but it was in a detached sort of way. Between eight and nine o'clock! Peters was rarely able to leave the Ellsworth home on his evenings off until well after eight o'clock; Peters, therefore, would not reach his flat much before nine, and certainly was not likely to leave there again immediately.

Billy Kane's mind was working in quick, and seemingly unrelated s.n.a.t.c.hes of thought. There was time enough to see this Vetter game through without interfering with that interview he meant to hold with Peters....

It was strange that it should be Vetter ... Whitie Jack had spoken of Vetter ... Savnak, the violin player, and Vetter ... Whitie Jack said that Savnak and Vetter spent most of their evenings together at Vetter's playing pinochle and the violin.... Savnak would likely be there then between eight and nine.... Upon whom was it that the so-called Mole intended to point suspicion?... Here was the moral obligation again....

He had fought that out last night.... She, this woman here, was not the driving force.... She only represented disaster from an entirely different source if he failed.... If he stood aside with the foreknowledge of crime in his possession he was as guilty as this Mole.... Perhaps he had been trying to trick his own conscience in not pressing Red Vallon for explanations.... Perhaps, in a measure, he had allowed the argument that he might invite Red Vallon's suspicions to act as an excuse for evading the responsibility that this foreknowledge of crime entailed.... Well, that responsibility was his now, thanks to her.... He had no choice.... It was likely to be the man in the mask again, and--

She pushed the paper toward him.

"Perhaps you would like to destroy this-for safety's sake," she observed complacently.

He took the paper mechanically, and mechanically tore it up.

"I do not know the Mole personally"-she was speaking almost more to herself than to him, as though feeling her way cautiously along a tortuous mental path-"I only know him as an exceedingly clever scoundrel, and as the head of a small, but very select, band of criminals. He is a sort of compet.i.tor of yours, I believe, and more than once has had the temerity to act as a thorn in the side of your own rapacious and diabolical crime trust. But I do know that this Vetter is an honest old man. It would be too bad"-her voice, still low, was suddenly vibrant with a significance that there was no mistaking-"if Vetter should lose his diamonds, wouldn't it, Bundy?"

The spiral of cigarette smoke again occupied Billy Kane. It was quite true that his mind was already made up; but for the moment he was the Rat, and the Rat would not be likely to accede to her suggestion with any overwhelming degree of complacency.

"You are a little inconsistent, aren't you?" he inquired sarcastically.