Chapter 3

The men servants had evidently
joined forces with the detectives; and yelling hoarsely, a pack of human
hounds in cry, with the blood-scent in their nostrils, were some
twenty-five to thirty yards behind.

How curiously warm his shoulder was! He clapped his right hand upon it,
and drew his hand away, red and dripping wet. He began to feel strangely
giddy. The shots were coming now in a fusillade—but they missed him. He
was even gaining a little, and if it were not for that queer giddiness,
that sense of nausea that seemed to be creeping steadily upon him, he
could have outdistanced them all, and laughed at them—except that the
entire district would soon be aroused, and speed and lightness of foot
would therefore ultimately avail him little.

He laughed out harshly in grim, mirthless facetiousness. Logically then,
it made small difference whether he had been hit, or not! It was his
head, and not his feet, that must be depended upon to save him! If he
could only get out of the immediate neighborhood ... yes, that was it
... and his head must find the way ... only, and he was not very logical
after all, his head seemed possessed with that sick, swimming, impotent
sensation.

He reeled again. Then his teeth clamped hard, and the sheer nerve of the
man asserted itself, and fought back the purely physical weakness. There
was a way, at least a chance, perhaps a desperate chance, but still a
chance—if the alleyway, that was just ahead now, was dark enough, and
if——

A yell, chorused wildly, went up from behind him, and a bullet struck
the pavement with an angry _spat_, as Billy Kane swerved into the
alleyway. And again he laughed, gasping out the laugh in a sort of
desperate relief. Yes, the alleyway was black enough, he could not
distinguish an object twenty yards ahead; and that other “if,” something
that would furnish temporary sanctuary, was here, too, at his right—and
five yards in from the street, he sprang for the top of a board fence,
flung himself over, dropped down on the other side, and lay motionless
upon the ground.

It was a matter of seconds—no more. The pursuers swept into the
alleyway, and tearing down its length, shouting as they went, rushed by
that spot, so _innocently close_ to the street, where their quarry lay.

And now Billy Kane was on his feet again, and cautiously, silently,
raised himself to the top of the fence once more. He had counted on just
this exactly, it was simply what was naturally to be expected, and he
knew no elation on that score. The chance, the one chance he had, still
lay ahead of him, and was still to be taken—and to be taken without an
instant’s loss of time before the neighborhood became aroused to the
extent of pouring curiously out-of-doors. Across the intervening street
the alleyway extended in the opposite direction, and if he could gain
the other side, double on his tracks, he would, for the time being at
least, be safe.

The sound of the pursuit came from well down the alleyway now, and the
pursuers were lost to sight in the blackness. He swung himself over the
fence, dropped without a sound into the alleyway, and keeping close
against the fence, crept forward to the edge of the street.

And then Billy Kane’s lips moved in a silent prayer of fervent
thankfulness for that quiet and sedate neighborhood that had not
instantly responded to the disturbance. It had seemed hours, of course,
since that shot had been fired at him in the courtyard of David
Ellsworth’s home, but in reality he knew that it could scarcely have
been much more than a minute ago. The street, to all appearances, was
deserted; and Billy Kane, quick now, running again, darted out from the
lane; and, mindful that if he crossed the street in a direct line, he
would be in the light, and that any one of those in the alleyway behind
who might chance to look back would see him, made a slight detour, and a
moment later gained the alleyway again where it continued on from the
opposite side of the street.

He ran on now breathlessly. It had been raining hard that morning, and
the ground under foot was soft and slippery. He reeled once, and
fell—and rose splattered with grime and mud. He laughed again, but his
laugh was desperate now. It had been bad enough before—coatless, and
with a blood-soaked shirt—but his appearance must be disreputable beyond
description now, so disreputable that he would attract instant suspicion
the moment he were seen by anyone, and this quite apart even from the
fact that before very long the net spread for the “murderer” of David
Ellsworth would widen, and every man and woman abroad in that great city
to-night would automatically become allies of the police in apprehending
him.

He stopped. He was at the end of the alleyway, and it did not seem to
extend again on the other side of the next street. But he must go
on—somehow. He brushed his hand across his eyes. His shoulder pained
him, and those dizzy flashes kept recurring, though perhaps not now with
such great frequency. He must go on—somehow. That was essential. He must
put as great an immediate distance between himself and the Ellsworth
mansion as possible; later, if by some means he could get there, if luck
broke for him just a little, his chances would be better, thanks to
those three months of intimacy with the underworld, if he could get
somewhere into the maze of the East Side.

He peered out into the street, waited for some pedestrians who were near
at hand to pass further on, and then, moving quickly forward, crouched
down in the shadows made by the flight of front door steps of the
nearest house.

If he only had a coat! He could walk boldly then along the street
without the blood showing on his white shirt, and it would cover up
enough of the mud so that no one would pay any particular attention to
him. If he only had a coat! He had two thousand dollars in his vest
pocket—but it was not worth a coat. Anybody would sell him a coat for
two thousand dollars, but—— His hands went to his eyes, and then pressed
against his throbbing temples. Yes, certainly, his brain was verging on
delirium! Why should he think of Marco’s? Yes, yes, he remembered now!
Somebody was going to break into Marco’s to-night ... and Marco was a
second-hand clothing dealer ... and the back door had its lock broken
... and the way was open. He could steal too ... a coat ... at Marco’s
... and that was the only way he could get a coat ... to steal it ... he
dared not make any attempt to buy one ... and he must have a coat.

His brain cleared again, and he smiled a little ironically at himself.
But the thought of Marco’s now stuck persistently. It was possible, of
course—if he could get to Marco’s! But Marco’s was a long way off.
Marco’s was a long way downtown on the East Side. He shook his head,
smiling ironically again. Yes, he would very much like to be there now!
That was where he wanted to be—in the East Side, instead of here!

Billy Kane peered up and down the street again, and again moved
stealthily forward. He repeated these tactics over and over, sometimes
covering only a few yards at a time, sometimes making as much as half a
block, and sometimes even more when a friendly lane or alleyway offered
him the opportunity. And at the expiration of half an hour he had
covered a distance that surprised even himself, for, though still
uptown, he had succeeded in getting entirely away from the more wealthy
neighborhood.

Another ten minutes passed, and hidden again in the shadows of a porch,
he was staring now with feverish eagerness at a great, covered motor
truck, a furniture van, that was drawn up in front of what appeared to
be a truck-man’s office across the street. The driver had gone into the
office, but there was the street to cross—and two men were coming
leisurely in his direction along the sidewalk. He clenched his hands
fiercely at his sides. Here was the chance flaunting him in the face and
tantalizing him, the chance that was a far greater chance even than he
had dared hope for, and he was powerless to avail himself of it unless
those two men passed by before the driver came out again. He could read
the name and address in the huge letters on the side of the van. It
belonged down on the East Side. This was probably only a small uptown
branch office, and the odds were a hundred to one that the van would be
going home now. And if the driver took a direct route he was bound to
use a cross street that would intersect that lane in the rear of
Marco’s, and intersect it within at least a few blocks of the
second-hand dealer’s shop. Billy Kane’s hands clenched tighter, and his
face was strained and drawn, as from his hiding place he alternately
watched the van and the two men. Those few blocks through a lane would
be nothing! God, if he could only reach Marco’s—and a coat! A coat! It
seemed an absurd thing to be of such moment—a coat! But it meant life or
death. A coat would cover his blood-stained shirt, and he would be able
to move with freedom enough to give him at least a fighting chance,
and——

The two men had passed by; there was no one else in sight. He waited
another moment until they were still further away—and then, in a flash,
Billy Kane was across the road, and had swung himself over the
tail-board into the van. It seemed like some vast cavernous place here
inside, for the van was empty, save for what appeared to be, as nearly
as he could make out in the gloom, some large pieces of crated furniture
piled at the front end just behind the driver’s seat. Billy Kane’s eyes
swept the interior anxiously—and the drawn, strained look in Billy
Kane’s face relaxed. By lying flat on the floor of the van the driver
would hardly be likely to notice him in any case; but, to make assurance
doubly sure, some bits of sacking, evidently used to wrap around and
protect furniture from being scratched and marred, were strewn about on
the floor. Billy Kane pulled off his slouch hat, that had been jammed
down over his eyes, drew a piece of the sacking over him, and lay still.

And then presently he heard the driver come out from the office. The man
climbed to his seat. The van jolted forward. Billy Kane’s hand, under
the sacking, felt tentatively over his shoulder. It was paining him
brutally, and was burning and hot, but it seemed to have stopped
bleeding, and the sense of nausea and giddiness had passed away. It was
a flesh wound only, probably; or, at least, the bullet had not fractured
any bone, for he could move both shoulder and arm readily.

And now, safe for the moment, Billy Kane’s mind was back on the events
of the evening; and for a time grief for the man he loved had its sway;
and then came fury, pitiless and remorseless, and a cry in his soul for
vengeance; and then a quiet, measured analysis of every detail, an
analysis that was deadly in its cold, unnatural calm. Jackson’s acts in
that back passageway, Jackson’s possession of a revolver, and Jackson’s
words at the end stamped the footman irrevocably as being one of the men
in the murder plot. And with Jackson’s guilt established as a premise,
the rest unravelled itself step by step, clearly, logically,
irrefutably.

David Ellsworth’s deductions had proved themselves in ghastly truth. The
letter had been written as the initiatory step toward incriminating him,
Billy Kane, in the robbery that was to follow; and this demanded, even
as he had argued before, that the vault and safe combinations should be
known to a third party. Who knew them? The answer came now quickly and
emphatically enough—someone within the house—Jackson. He remembered now,
though he had paid no attention to it before, that Jackson had been in
the library on several occasions when he, Billy Kane, was opening the
vault. It had probably taken the man a month or two, perhaps more,
watching both David Ellsworth and himself at every opportunity and with
infinite patience, to pick up little by little, possibly but a single
number or turn at a time, the combinations—but he had undoubtedly
accomplished it finally.

The original plan had certainly not contemplated the murder of David
Ellsworth, for the letter was primarily intended to make the old
millionaire one of the first to accuse him, Billy Kane, of the
crime—there having been left on the scene of the crime, of course, in
that case, as David Ellsworth had also reasoned, some further damning
evidence of his, Billy Kane’s, supposed guilt. But the changing of the
combinations had completely upset that original plan. Who was it, then,
who knew that the combinations _had_ been changed? Again the question
answered itself almost automatically. It must have been someone in the
house at the time, and someone who was both listening and
watching—Jackson. True, David Ellsworth had looked out into the hall,
and had opened the door and looked into the unlighted stenographer’s
room, but he had done it only cursorily, and Jackson all the time might
well have been hiding in that room—in fact, must have been hiding there.

The rest was self-evident. Without the combinations they were helpless,
but the new combinations were on a card in David Ellsworth’s pocket. It
had been necessary, then, only to add _murder_ to the theft, employing
as accessories the card, the letter, the button and the black silk loop,
in order to seize the opportunity of the moment; for, the card bearing
the combinations once destroyed or out of reach, the months of work that
had been put in to secure the old combinations would have to be repeated
to obtain the new—and with very little likelihood of success, since
Jackson would know that David Ellsworth’s suspicions were thoroughly
aroused.

The van rolled rapidly downtown. Billy Kane, peering out from under the
sacking, kept watch on the streets through which he passed. But his mind
was still busy with its problem.

Jackson’s act in accosting him on the corner, and afterwards luring him
by suggestion to the rear of the house, had puzzled him at first, but
that, too, was clear enough now. There was a grain of truth in what the
man had said about giving him a chance, though Jackson would care little
enough whether he ultimately got away, or not. Jackson’s idea, or
perhaps the idea of a keener brain behind Jackson, was to prevent him,
Billy Kane, from entering the house at all, and so, by inducing him to
run for it, to corroborate the evidence of guilt against him, in which
case, being a self-elected fugitive, he would be doubly condemned if
eventually caught. On the other hand, if he refused to listen and
insisted on entering the house, as they were afraid he might do, they
meant to see to it that his entrance was made by apparent stealth, and
here again he but added the final touch to the evidence against him, and
discredited himself beyond any hope or possibility of recovery. Jackson
had taken no personal risk or chance in doing this, as far as the police
were concerned; and it was evident now that Jackson had meant to _kill_
him there in that back passageway should he, Billy Kane, persist in
refusing to run. The case and all investigation would have ended
automatically if he, Billy Kane were killed under such circumstances. It
was all simplicity itself! Jackson had only to call for help, as he had
done when the issue was forced by that approaching footstep, pretend
that he had discovered him, Billy Kane, creeping into the house, and had
rushed upon him—that he, Billy Kane, had drawn the revolver, but that in
the struggle had been shot himself. With the evidence as it stood, with
his, Billy Kane’s guilt so apparently obvious, Jackson would not only
have been believed, but would have been rewarded and lauded as a hero.

Still the van rolled on—mostly through deserted streets, for the traffic
was light at that time of night. Perhaps another twenty minutes passed.
Then Billy Kane began to edge toward the rear end of the truck. He was
in the East Side now, and approaching the neighborhood of Marco’s
second-hand clothing store.

Was Jackson dead? Billy Kane shook his head. He did not know. A grim
smile twisted his lips. He hoped not—not from any sympathy for the man,
for the man’s punishment in that case had been almost too merciful a
retribution, but because in Jackson was embodied the clue that would
lead, if he, Billy Kane, escaped, to that day of reckoning that, cost
what it might, he meant should come.

The van was in a narrow and ill-lighted street now. Marco’s was still
two streets further downtown, but in the block ahead was the lane that,
running north and south, passed the rear of Marco’s place.

Billy Kane sat suddenly upright on the tail-board of the van, the piece
of sacking thrown now around his shoulders. If the driver happened to
look around and see him, the supposition would be that he had hopped on
to steal a ride; and if the driver ordered him off it mattered very
little, since, in another yard or so anyhow, the van, as far as he was
concerned, would have lost its usefulness. He leaned out, and glanced
ahead of him up the street. There were a few people about, but not many,
and none in the immediate vicinity of the lane that was now just at
hand; but even if he were seen for an instant as he left the van, he
would not be running any very great risk for he would be out of sight
again before any particular attention could be riveted upon him; and,
besides, in that miserable and sordid quarter a man might do many things
out of the ordinary, for instance, dive suddenly into a lane and
disappear, without exciting even passing curiosity or notice.

He jerked his slouch hat over his eyes, flung off the sacking, dropped
to the ground, and slipped across the sidewalk into the lane. And now he
was running again. He reached the next intersecting street, and was
forced to draw back under cover to wait for an opportunity to cross
unnoticed. And then the chance came, and he continued on down the lane
on the opposite side of the street again.

Marco’s was the second store in from the next corner on the street that
paralleled the lane, and halfway down he stopped running and began to
move forward cautiously. It was very black in here, and he wished now
that he had looked at his watch when he had had the opportunity; but it
must be somewhere around ten o’clock. It was two hours, then, since he
had overheard that telephone conversation in which Laverto had said that
all he cared was that the man to whom he was telephoning should be away
from Marco’s before a quarter of eleven.

Billy Kane was crouched now in the darkness against the back door of the
second-hand shop. The chances were that whoever Laverto had been
telephoning to had already been here and gone. Certainly two hours would
have given any one ample time, and as Laverto had said that Marco did
not keep open in the evening there would have been no cause for delay on
that score.

He placed his ear to the panel of the door, and listened. There was no
sound, and he tried the door. It stuck a little in spite of its broken
lock, and gave with a slight squeak. Billy Kane drew in his breath
sharply, and listened again. There was still no sound. He closed the
door behind him, and crept forward, feeling his way with his hands along
the wall in the pitch blackness. The flooring was old, and once it
creaked under his foot, causing his lips to tighten rigidly, and his
face to set in a hard, dogged way. He had no matches—they, in the
match-safe that he usually carried in the ticket-pocket of his coat,
were gone with the coat. A coat! All sense of absurdity in the length to
which he was going to obtain so common-place an article as a coat had
vanished. It was the one, final, ultimate, essential thing that he must
and would have if he was to know a single chance for life. Without it he
might as well throw up the sponge at once, but if his luck still held he
would get one now. Marco’s stock of clothing would naturally be in the
shop in front, and——

His hand dove suddenly forward into space, and he halted for an instant.
He had come to an open doorway on his right. He felt around him in all
directions. The passage seemed to end a foot or so ahead, and to lead
nowhere but into what was probably the back room here at his side. The
entrance, then, to the shop proper would be through the back room.

Again he moved forward, crossed the threshold, and again halted. It was
dark, intensely dark, and he could see nothing; and it was still and
silent, and there was no sound. But suddenly he found himself standing
in a tense, strained attitude, his head thrown a little forward, his
eyes striving to pierce the darkness. He could hear nothing, see
nothing—but the sense of _presence_ was strong upon him.

A minute passed, the seconds dragging out interminably—and he did not
move. And then it seemed that close to him he caught a faint stirring
sound. But he was not sure. It might have been his imagination. The
silence, so heavy and prolonged, had taken on strange little noises of
its own. Billy Kane’s lips thinned. He was bare-handed, wounded and
unarmed, but he had a stake that he would fight for with a beast’s
ferocity. And that stake was a coat! If there was anyone here, if it was
more than his excited and wrought-up fancy playing tricks upon him, it
was certain at least that it was not the police, for the police would
have no incentive to play at cat-and-mouse, and therefore it was
probably the man, not yet through with his work, to whom Laverto had
telephoned; it was probably a _fellow_ thief, fellow since he, Billy
Kane, had also come to steal—a coat. Well, he would at least end the
suspense! He turned in the direction from which he thought the sound,
imaginary or real, had come, took a step forward—and stood still, hands
clenched at his sides, as he blinked, through the ray of a flashlight
that was suddenly thrown full in his face, at the round, ugly muzzle of
a revolver that held a steady bead upon him on a level with his eyes.

A voice came through the silence in a savage, guttural snarl:

“Throw up yer mitts, youse——” The words ended in an amazed and startled
oath. The revolver muzzle sagged downward, as though the hand that held
it had become suddenly powerless. “Well, fer Gawd’s sake, if it ain’t de
Rat!” gasped the voice in a hoarse whisper. “When did youse get back? I
thought youse was hobnobbin’ wid some of de swells youse used to know,
an’ was givin’ Noo Yoik de icy paw until next month!”

IV—ALIAS THE RAT

Billy Kane’s face was impassive. The keen, alert brain was working with
desperate speed. There had come in a flash with the other’s words a
vista, not quite clear, nor distinct, but a vista that seemed to promise
the way and the chance, not only of immediate escape from this place
here, but perhaps more than that—assistance, help, perhaps even refuge
and temporary sanctuary from the police who, before morning, would be
scouring every quarter of New York in an effort to capture him. This
man, a thief, a criminal, one of the underworld himself, had obviously
mistaken him, Billy Kane, for another of his own ilk—for one known as
the Rat. His appearance, disreputable, blood-stained and mud-covered,
had undoubtedly been a very large factor in bringing about the man’s
mistake, it was true; but that did not in any way apply to his, Billy
Kane’s, _face_, and his face had been, and was still, full in the
pitiless glare of the flashlight. Therefore he must to a very remarkable
extent resemble this so-called Rat. And, moreover, this Rat must be a
figure of some consequence in the underworld; for, even through the
man’s hoarse and amazed tones, Billy Kane’s quick ear had caught a note
of almost cringing deference. And then Billy Kane’s under jaw crept out
a little, and his eyes narrowed. Well, for the moment, at least, he
would play the part—because he must.

“Who in hell are you?” he demanded gruffly. “I can’t see you behind that
light.”

“I’m Whitie Jack,” the other answered mechanically.

“Whitie Jack, eh?” snapped Billy Kane. “Well, then”—his hand shot out,
and pushed the flashlight roughly away—“take your cursed lamp out of my
eyes? What are you playing at?”

“Sure!” mumbled the man. “Sure—it’s all right! Only youse gave me de
jumps sneakin’ in here. Bundy Morgan—de Rat! Wot’s de idea?”

Nothing perhaps would confirm the man more in his mistake than an
allusion to the common enemy—the police. Billy Kane dropped into the
vernacular. But the man’s reference to “de swells youse used to know”
had given him his cue. The Rat at one time had probably known quite a
different station in life, and the Rat’s speech therefore, even in the
vernacular, would hardly be ungrammatical.

“A coat,” said Billy Kane tersely. “The bulls have got my costume
spotted.”

“Swipe me!” Whitie Jack drew in his breath in a low whistle. “De
bulls—eh? So dat’s de lay! Well, youse wait a minute, an’ I’ll get youse
one. Youse look as though youse had blamed near cashed in! Youse have
spilled a lot of red out of dat shoulder, eh?”

“It’s pretty bad,” answered Billy Kane laconically.

“Sure!” said Whitie Jack again; and then, eagerly, the deference back in
his voice: “Well, youse wait a minute, Bundy, an’ I’ll get youse de best
coat de old geezer’s got—though dat’s not sayin’ much, for dere’s
nothin’ here but a bunch of rags.”

The man was gone. Billy Kane leaned back against the wall. His hand
swept across his eyes. It seemed as though for hours he had been living
through some horrible and ghastly nightmare from which he could not
awake. He was Billy Kane, whom the world, in the morning, would proclaim
the murderer of David Ellsworth; but he was also now Billy Kane, alias
Bundy Morgan, alias the Rat! Again his hand swept across his eyes. And
the Rat—who was the Rat? And what——

Whitie Jack was back.

“Here!” said Whitie Jack. “Here youse are!” He handed Billy Kane a coat,
and his flashlight fell again on Billy Kane’s shoulder. “Say, dat’s
bad!” he jerked out; and then, irrelevantly, “Say, wouldn’t it sting
youse—youse showin’ up here! When did youse blow into town, Bundy?”

“To-night,” said Billy Kane.

“Well, youse didn’t take long in startin’ something!” said Whitie Jack
admiringly. He helped Billy Kane on with the coat. “Was it a big one,
Bundy?”

“No,” said Billy Kane. “Only a fight, but someone got _hurt_ in the
fight—get me, Whitie? And the bulls are out for fair.”

Whitie Jack drew in his breath in a low, comprehensive whistle again.

“Sing Sing, an’ de juice route—eh?” he muttered. “Did dey spot who youse
were?”

“No,” said Billy Kane.

“Aw, well den, wot de hell!” observed Whitie Jack, with a sudden grin.
“Dat’s easy! Youse have got a coat now, an’ we’ll beat it over for yer
dump, an’ dat’s de end of it! You have got to get dat shoulder fixed,
an’ I’m some guy wid de bandage stuff—believe me!”

Billy Kane did not answer for a moment. Well, why not? He had accepted
the absent Rat’s personality, why not the absent Rat’s hospitality? It
would afford him shelter for the moment, and he was living, feeling,
groping his way now only from moment to moment. Also, and what was of
even more urgent importance, he must somehow and in some way get his
wound dressed.

The flashlight in Whitie Jack’s hand was sweeping in a circle around the
room—in a sort of precautionary leave-taking survey of the place, as it
were.