Dead Men’s Letters

This Way Out

He slipped into my little apartment with a quick glance over his shoulder and a finger to his lips. I frowned at him. A crook he was, and I don’t care to have crooks pay me social calls. I have made my reputation in crookdom as being a lone wolf, one who has no friends.

“Ed,” he whispered, “I’ve come as a friend. You did me a good turn once, and I haven’t forgotten it. The woman with the mole on her left hand — watch out for her. They’re after you, Ed Jenkins. The police want you. The crooks want you. You haven’t a gang to back you up… Beware of the woman with the mole on her left hand.”

That much of a warning he gave me, and then he was gone. It was as well. I pay but little attention to warnings. Also he left the jail smell in the apartment, that sickening, cloying odor of jail disinfectant. He had been in for vagrancy, this crook who was known as the Weasel. When the police couldn’t frame anything better on him they’d throw him in on a vagrancy charge and bully him just enough to let him remember that he was nothing but a crook, and a weak crook at that. The stronger ones they left alone until they really had something on them. Little crooks like the Weasel were beaten up, knocked around from pillar to post.

I opened the windows to let the apartment air out.

As I flung open the window and stuck my head out into the balmy air of the summer night there came the bark of a pistol, another and another. Then silence.

The shots had come from around the corner, perhaps a block away. There was the whining shriek of tires as a car skidded around the corner gathered momentum, and shot away into the night. A woman screamed, a man called out some hoarse question. There was the sound of running feet on the pavement, and isolated masses of animated curiosity sprinted toward the scene of the shooting.

I withdrew my head. Somehow, I had an uncomfortable feeling that the shooting concerned me. There was nothing to go on — nothing but that intangible feeling.

I waited for an hour, sitting there in the dark, giving the police a chance to make their investigations and get away from there, allowing the curiosity seekers a chance to get their fill and disperse. Then I put on hat and topcoat and went out.

At the cigar store on the corner I got the news. The Weasel it had been. Shot from a machine, one of those death cars which figure so prominently in bandit gang wars. He had been killed almost instantly.

I bit the end from a cigar, stepped to the flame which burned steadily and brightly, and thought of the life that had been snuffed out. Was it because of the warning? Was he suspected? Had he been followed to my apartment and killed as he left? Probably — I would never know for sure. The Weasel was one of those third-rate crooks, who allows himself to be shot down by a car full of bandits. The first-class man would have detected that car the instant it came in sight. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety in crookdom.

Off and on I have had many warnings, some sincere and some fake. This was peculiar. A warning by a crook, a warning against a woman with a mole on her left hand. There was no other description. Perhaps the Weasel had no opportunity to see her face. Perhaps he had seen merely the hand, heard her voice — perhaps I wished I could question him a bit. Probably I had shown my impatience. At any rate it was a closed chapter. The Weasel was dead.

I stepped to the curb, called a taxi and went to a cabaret.

The Purple Rose was a fairly wild cabaret. There were entertainers who had lots of pep, waiters who rushed perspiringly about, amorous dancers who twined and writhed over the floor and a crashing orchestra that blared away into the din of the echoing room. Crowded, sweaty, brazen, sensuous, it furnished entertainment, gave me a chance to study types, and something to think about.

The head waiter seated me at my usual table, one well back in a shaded corner. Time was when couples would have demanded this as the choice table of the place. Now they preferred to spoon openly, upon the dance floor, at the tables where the lights glared full upon them. Such is life.

I ordered a light meal, ate leisurely, enjoying the various characters I could study, listening to the blaring music, the harsh laughter, looking ’em over.

It was as I finished that a girl came to my table.

“Cheer up! I’m inclined to think it isn’t so. How about a dance?”

I shook my head, taking her for one of the paid female entertainers. I knew most of them, had established myself as one to be left alone. This one evidently must be new.

She smiled, whirled about, looked at me coquettishly over her shoulder, held her hand up to a level with her eyes, snapped her fingers, and then smiled, a slow smile of red parted lips.

Her vitality, the quick grace of her motions, the snap and pep of her would have arrested my attention, but there was something else. As her hand came to a level with her eyes I noticed a mole upon her left hand, a small, dark discoloration on the back of the hand, showing sharply against the white of her smooth skin.

I paid my check and left the place. There was one cabaret that would be crossed off of my list. I thought of the Weasel, the barking of those staccato shots.

I summoned a cab and was followed. This was annoying, but not entirely unique. I have been followed frequently. There was no reason why I should not have gone directly to my apartment. In California I am safe. A criminal record makes me wanted in a dozen States, but, through a technicality, I cannot be extradited from California. In that State I enjoy immunity. Known as a crook, I can, nevertheless, live my own life; subject only to those annoyances which come to one who is without the law, who is legitimate prey for every stool pigeon, for every tin-star detective, every square-toed bull.

I had the driver swing through town and then take a spin out in the country. I could not get the thought of the Weasel from my mind. There was something out of the ordinary in the wind. It was in a particularly dark and deserted stretch of road that the engine stopped. The driver jumped out and raised the hood. He was nervous, his hand trembling.

I slipped from the other door on the dark side of the car. Criminals can be arrested for carrying firearms, and I almost never have a gat in my possession. It is no crime to have one’s wits about him, and my wits will get me out of as many jams as would guns.

I watched the back road. Nothing came. A car came from the other direction, going toward town. It was a handsome creation of plate glass and baked enamel. A woman was driving, a woman who was well muffled, despite the fact that the weather was pleasantly warm.

There was the sound of tires sliding over the gravel and the woman leaned out.

“In trouble, Taxi? Can I take a message to town or give your fare a lift?”

It was a pleasantly intriguing voice.

I slipped the taxi driver a bill and stepped out into the light.

“I’d like a ride back to town if it wouldn’t inconvenience you.”

She laughed, a low throaty laugh, and swung open the door. “Get in, up here in front. You’ll be very welcome.”

I started as she slammed in the clutch, and I felt the car give a lurch forward. The hand which gripped the steering wheel had a small mole on the back of the smooth skin.

She saw that I recognized her. The right hand came down and rested on my knee.

“You are hard to get acquainted with, Ed Jenkins.”

I bowed.

“May I compliment you on the care you used in getting me in the car with you? The detail of the taxicab breakdown, the forethought of having a set of signals arranged, as you must have had, the coming toward town instead of in the same direction I was going. It was all very clever.”

She rippled a laugh. “It was clever. I had it fixed so the taxi driver would signal to me by flashing on and off the brake light. When he knew what road he was to take he signalled the number of miles from the turn where he would stall the engine. I took the loop and came by, going back toward town.”

“If you wanted to see me why not have come directly to my apartment? Why go to all this trouble?”

Her eyes became cold and hard, her mouth tightened to a thin line.

“Because,” she said slowly, “I wanted to do more than see you. I wanted to get you entirely in my power.”

With the words, I became aware that a small, deadly revolver was in that right hand, a revolver that was held against my ribs.

I looked at her carefully. She could fire if she wanted to before I could get my hands on her arm, before I could move far enough to grasp her. She could fire if she wanted to, but did she want to? Did she have the nerve? I studied her face and decided she was desperate. Whether or not she would pull the trigger I didn’t know. She wasn’t exactly the type that shoots for the fun of the thing, but she was desperate. Something was on her mind besides her bobbed hair.

“Ed Jenkins,” she said, “you are coming with me. I only ask that you do as I say for two hours. At the end of that time you will be free to go where you please as far as I am concerned. Until then you must accompany me. Will you promise you will come and that you won’t try to escape, or must I keep you covered? I’ll shoot if I have to.”

I yawned.

“Keep me covered, kid.”

There was a catch in her voice.

“But the gun might go off, accidentally.”

“Let it.”

Her lips tightened. She stepped on the throttle, and I crooked my right leg, caught the emergency brake back of my heel and gave a sudden jerk of the lever. She had been bracing herself against the acceleration of the throttle, and the sudden locking of the wheels threw her forward against the steering wheel. One of my hands circled her neck, the middle finger locking on her nose, the other wrenched her wrist.

When I had tossed the gun overboard I took my foot off the emergency brake lever, straightened up the car, which had swung sideways on the road, and grinned over at the kid.

“Step on it,” I told her.

Her face was white, chalky; there was a fire in her eyes that seemed to make them blaze in the darkness, and her lips were set in a thin, determined line.

“You brute, you cad!”

I yawned again.

“That’s the way with you women. You claim the privilege of sticking a gun in my ribs, and then, because I take it away from you I’m no gentleman. You make me sick. Drive on before I take you over my knee and give you a blamed good spanking.”

She slammed the car to a stop, doubled up her knees, swung around from the back of the steering wheel, and came on me like a wildcat, biting, scratching, striking, furious. I held her as best I could, keeping her off. Her dress ripped from one shoulder, her high-heeled shoes dug into my leg as she twisted her legs about mine, and her pearly teeth snapped as she tried to bite me. It was a rough party while it lasted.

All of a sudden she stiffened, then relaxed and began to cry, and — such is the consistency of the sex — she began to bawl on my shoulder. She was a total wreck. Her stockings had come unrolled and slipped down her bare legs gleaming white beneath the dash-light. Her hair was strung all around her face, her dress was tom, and my hand was resting on the soft warmth of her bare shoulder, and blamed if I wasn’t patting her a bit, sort of comforting her. Why I don’t know — sort of mechancial, I guess; but I sure didn’t intend to sit there and console her because she hadn’t been able to kill me.

I shoved her away.

“Oh, how I hate you!” she blazed.

I nodded. “It sure looks it. The next time my taxi breaks down and a girl offers me a ride to town I’ll have my roller skates along.”

And then she made a lunge at me, pillowed her head on my shoulder again and sobbed some more. I let her cry it out. Disappointment and rage had made her pretty near hysterical, and I wanted her to calm down for a chin-chin. I wanted to find out what it was all about, get a line on this dame with the mole on her hand.

After a while she straightened, reached down and rolled her socks, then she powdered her nose and straightened her hair. Back to normal again.

She slipped up her dress, fastened it somehow, looked at me and then grinned.

“You win,” she remarked.

“Where did you want me to go?” I asked her.

The smile faded for a minute and I thought she was going to cry again. “It meant so damned much to me,” she said, “I didn’t think I could possibly fall down…”

She broke off to look at her wrist watch, then sighed again.

“I was to have you in a certain place in twenty minutes from now… I thought sure I could vamp you, then, when I couldn’t, I determined to get rough… Oh, it meant so much to me!”

I watched her curiously.

“Where was this place, and were you under orders from someone else?”

“I can’t tell you where it is, Ed, and I was under orders.”

I settled back in the cushions. “Well, get started. Don’t be so damned weepy, and drive. If anybody wants me at a certain place at a certain time, I’m just obstinate enough to go there — and what’s more, I’m going to start a little celebration when I get there. I’m getting tired of having a lot of cheap crooks try to interfere with me. I’m going to take a look at this person who sicced a cave-woman on my trail.”

She grinned all over her face.

“I thought maybe you’d come,” she gurgled, and then I knew she’d been playing me. Hang women, anyway! I’d eaten right out of her hands.

“I knew you were just brave enough to see it through, Ed Jenkins! It means so much to me, and I’ll sure remember it. Maybe I can do something for you, some time.”

With that she circled my neck and kissed me, jumped back behind the wheel, stepped on the starter, and began to take corners on two wheels. She could drive, that lady, and she was in one grand hurry.

Once in the city we headed toward Chinatown. I sat up and began to take notice. I know Chinese pretty well, know their language a bit, know something of their psychology. If the drama I was to play a part in was to be enacted in Chinatown so much the better.

We stopped before a small, dingy store, a store that had some fly-specked ivory curios in the window, and two Chinese watchmen sitting outside. That was nothing out of the ordinary. The Chinks that sit careless-like around the sidewalks of Chinatown, with their shoulders hunched forward, puffing meditatively on pipes, aren’t just enjoying the scenery, or indulging in philosophic meditation. They’re guards, watching the safety of the place in front of which they’re sitting.

“Ed,” she said, “I’m not responsible for your frame of mind when you get here. All I am supposed to do is to see that you go to a certain room and interview a certain man. I’d like to have it appear that I did a good job, so would you mind looking just a little mooney, sort of mushy, you know?”

I climbed out of the car.

“Lead the way,” I told her.

We went in, and, as we entered the place, she slipped her warm little hand into mine. Hand in hand we went back through a storeroom packed with jabbering, beady-eyed Chinese, past a guard who watched the back passageways, and into the gloom of twisting, winding corridors, through heavy oak doors and deserted rooms.

I pulled my hand loose and slipped my arm about her waist, holding her close to me. It wasn’t that I wanted to act out what she said about being mushy, but I trusted her just as much as I’d have trusted a rattlesnake.

At length we turned to the left, knocked twice before a heavy door, heard the little click of a lock that was shot back by electricity, and I found myself in a great room, a room that was fixed up with teakwood furniture, expensive tapestries and Oriental rugs. It was rich, quiet, luxurious.

A heavy teakwood desk stood in the middle of the room, and behind this desk was a great bulk of a man. He seemed soft, flabby fat as far as physical appearance was concerned, but there was an ice-cold hardness about his eyes that made them appear like two great diamonds, glittering in the half-light of the dim room.

I stiffened. For months there had been choked off whispers of a crime syndicate, of a great man who sat in an “office” and directed crime, who had systematized blackmailing, bootlegging, gem robberies. No one could be found who knew him, and yet they all knew of him, a mysterious half-knowledge compounded of whispered rumors, vague surmises, wild conjectures. I had heard this gossip of the underworld, and placed it as a fairy tale, one of those wild nightmares which run through the criminal world at times. Now I began to feel an uncomfortable certainty.

He began to speak without introduction or explanation. His voice was surprising; low, soft, almost like a woman’s. His heavy frame, thick lips and huge bulk had prepared me for a deep, booming voice, but his words came so softly, so gently, that, had it not been for the moving of the thick lips, I would have thought some woman was concealed behind him, and was doing the talking.

“Ed Jenkins, you have the reputation of being able to open any safe without leaving a single trace showing that the lock has been tampered with, or that the door has been opened.”

There was something of interrogation in his tone, but I made no move, gave no sign.

He stopped a minute; then went on: “I have a safe you are to open; an envelope you are to place in the safe. It will be done before midnight tomorrow. It must not appear the safe has been opened.”

The blue-gray eyes of ice continued to bore into me. A sarcastic retort was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it. This man was one who would stop at nothing, and I was a known crook, was in the secret passages of Chinatown, and there were big stakes in the center of the table, or I didn’t know crooks.

“Naturally you will wonder why I should give you instructions. I know you, Ed Jenkins, know your record, know your activities, know much more than you think. You are a Lone Wolf, one who obeys no man. You have brains, so clever are you that you are known to the police of a dozen states as ‘The Phantom Crook,’ because of your ability to slip through their fingers, to obscure your connection with any crime.

“It is because of your ability that I am asking you to do this for me. In return I shall do something for you.”

With the words he reached in his desk and took out two envelopes.

“This envelope contains two thousand dollars,” he said, slitting the flap and sliding the envelope toward me. I could see the edges of the bank notes peeping out, but I did not pick it up. I waited. It had suited my pleasure to keep silent, to leave the burden of the conversation upon this great, hulking figure at the desk. I would use as few words as possible.

At my side I could hear the quick breathing of the girl. She was excited, tense. Her quick breathing told of a racing heart. There was more to this than appeared on the surface.

“This second envelope,” went on the man at the desk, “contains papers which should be of interest to you.”

He slid it over, and I took a quick glance at the contents. A glance was all I needed. Those papers were ones that I had searched for, high and low; through all of the devious channels of crookdom I had searched for them. They implicated one Chadwick in a crooked scheme, a scheme which would have sent him to the penitentiary. Chadwick was dead, but his wife and daughter lived, and they were of the upper crust, the elite of the city, the cream of society. Helen Chadwick, the daughter, was one girl who had meant much to me, one who had used me square. Her father had been blackmailed over those papers, had given notes to a crook for an even hundred thousand dollars because of those papers. I had helped the girl out of that scrape, but the papers remained outstanding. Somewhere in the great, inky pool of organized crookdom, of blackmailing intrigue, those papers had vanished, and I had searched for them. Their existence was a continuing menace to the squarest girl in the world, a girl who was a pal, who had fearlessly played the game…

I put those papers in the pocket of my coat. They could do what they pleased, and be damned to them. Those papers would not leave my possession.

The ice-cold eyes never left my face.

“I see you are reasonable, Jenkins. You are a man of honor, and your word is good. I shall ask your word that you will open a certain safe for me before midnight tomorrow. When you have given me your word you will be free to leave here with the papers and the cash.”

I nodded. I would have spoken, but I did not want my tone to betray my eagerness. I was a crook and he was a crook. I had the papers in my pocket. I would open any safe in the world for those papers. If I could earn them that way, well and good. If not, they remained with me, anyway. I was in his own castle, in his stronghold, but I had been in tighter places before.

He rubbed the fat flesh of his flabby hands together. His face did not change. There had never been so much as a ripple of the soft skin of that flabby face to indicate expression. The rubbing of the hands was the only sign of emotion.

“I see you are a wise man, Jenkins. My assistant will call on you in good time and give you complete instructions.”

I spoke at that, the first time I had spoken since entering the room. “Get this and get it straight. I give you my word to open the safe. However, it is understood that I am to be given a square deal. If you double-cross me in any way I am free to do as I please.”

The corners of the flabby lips may have twisted a bit at that. I couldn’t tell in the half-light.

“If you dare to play with me, Ed Jenkins, if you dare to disobey my instructions, you are at liberty to do so; but you will act at your peril.”

I sighed. He had the same old complex, the warped mind that fancied he controlled all power. I said nothing. There was no need. I had given him my warning.

He again opened the desk and took out a long manila envelope, an envelope that was sealed with great blobs of red sealing wax. On the outside of the envelope appeared simply a number. 543290 was the typewritten number which was on the envelope. It was thin, evidently enclosing but a single sheet of paper.

“Mr. Colby will call on you at your apartment. When he calls you may give him this envelope. He will know what to do with it. Thank you for coming. Maude, you are to be congratulated on having carried out my instructions. You may take Mr. Jenkins to his apartment.”

There was no good-night, nothing to show that the interview was ended other than the touch of finality in the tone. The huge figure remained motionless, the icy eyes glaring balefully forth from the semi-darkness.

“I will be at my apartment from nine to eleven tomorrow morning,” I told the man, determined to have the last word.

He said nothing, made no sign of having heard. His eyes watched me with unwinking appraisal. The girl’s hand rested on my arm. “Come,” she whispered, and I noticed that her hand was trembling. Together we left the room, wound our way through evil-smelling passageways, out into the store and to the street.

“Ed, would you mind driving?” she asked, and then I noticed that the girl was completely unnerved. Her face was chalky, her nostrils quivering, and she was shaking like a leaf. Was it excitement, or was it fear? I watched her closely and could not determine.

“So your name is Maude?” I asked her as I stepped on the starter.

She nodded absently. “Maude Enders,” she said.

I drove in silence, straight to the door of my apartment.

“Better run up,” I told her. “I’ll brew you a cup of tea. You seem all in.”

She shook her head abruptly. “No, I have only commenced,” she said, and there was still that absentminded ring to her voice. It was almost as though she was talking in her sleep.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Maude, you did me a good turn tonight. The papers I received mean a lot to me.”

That did not draw her out.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she agreed in the same toneless voice, and pressed her foot on the throttle I had relinquished, racing the engine a trifle, indicating that she was impatient to be gone.

“Wait just a minute,” I told her, “I’ll only detain you for a moment, but I want to give you something.”

With the words I turned and ran up the steps to my apartment house. However, I didn’t take the elevator. I skipped out of the back door and into my garage. There I opened the outer door, started the motor on my speedster, and got the engine nicely warmed up, then I went back into the apartment house, along the corridor and out the front door again.

“I thought I had a bottle of whiskey left,” I apologized, “and I was going to give it to you; but the janitor evidently found my hiding-place. It’s gone.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, and slipped in the clutch and purred away, without even a good night. Was she hypnotized, this girl with the mole? Those icy, blue-gray eyes gleaming from the half-darkness of that room in a Chinatown dive seemed to have changed her. However, I was not finished with the problem, not as yet. I had promised to open a safe. That far and that far only was I committed. I wasn’t even committed that far if they were double-crossing me.

I sprinted down the driveway, into my machine, and swung down the boulevard scarcely more than two blocks behind the girl’s car. I cut down the lead as quickly as I felt it was safe to do so, and followed the other machine. The girl drove as I might have expected, steadily, mechanically, looking neither to the right nor the left.

It was a matter of two miles before she stopped the car, stopped it in front of a flat in the better residential district. I swept on past, swung into a driveway, turned the car, parked on the other side of the street, and followed her up the stairs, through the door, and up another flight of stairs. She had something on her mind, this woman with the mole, and I proposed to see at least where she went. It was hardly to have been expected that I could have followed her into the house itself, but I took advantage of her preoccupation.

One thing was certain, I had nothing to lose. I had given my word that I would open a certain safe under certain conditions. Beyond that I was not committed. I might be walking into a trap of some kind, but I take those chances every day of my life. Nothing venture, nothing have.

She ran up to the second floor, and knocked on the door. There was a little vestibule and a flight of stairs running on to a third floor. The elevator ran in the vestibule, and the stairway, gave me excellent concealment.

There was silence after she knocked, and she repeated the knock, evidently a knock in code of some kind or other, a single knock, then a double, then, after an interval, a single one again. The silence evidently puzzled her.

Suddenly there sounded a gasping cry, a thud, a soft rustle, then silence. The girl turned the knob of the door doubtfully, as though expecting to find it locked. The sound had come from behind the door. The knob turned, the door swung inward and there was a yawning oblong of black darkness. Puzzled, the girl stood there on the threshold for an instant, then entered. There was a click of the electric light switch, and then the sound of a stifled scream, perhaps a woman’s, perhaps a man’s, then silence for a minute, then the girl came rushing out of the room, her face as pale as death, her eyes wide with fear, her lips bloodless. At that instant the door below opened and a man and woman started up the steps.

I did some quick thinking. Either that man and woman had the third flat, in which event it was unlikely they would have taken the steps unless the elevator was out of order, or they were going in the second flat. If they went to the third flat it was an even bet the elevator was out of order. If they went to the second I would be concealed if I went up the steps to the third flat. I started up, watching back over my shoulder. The lower part of the stairs was well lighted, the upper flight had a light at the landing above, but the stairs themselves were in semi-darkness.

The man and woman made way for the frightened girl, and they watched her curiously as she dashed past them, white of face and lip, wide of eye. The outer door slammed, and the couple came on up. They passed the second landing and came on up the third flight. I was ahead of them, bending over the button which brought the automatic elevator to the third floor.

“I’ll have this fixed in a few minutes,” I remarked casually, keeping bent forward, my face pressed close to the button.

“I wish you would,” snapped the woman. “I’ve climbed these stairs as often as I intend to. Either the landlord will keep that elevator in order or we’ll ask for a reduction in the rent. It’s been out of order too much lately.”

I said nothing more. The voice was harsh, brazen, metallic. It was not the voice of a lady. I dared not look at her face for I didn’t want her to see mine, but I could tell much from the voice.

They unlatched the door of the flat and went in. I turned and raced down the stairs, and into the flat below. I wanted to know what had happened in that room, who had screamed. I found out. Sprawled on the floor, his arms stretched out, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, was the form of a man. He had been stabbed in the back, and was in evening clothes, well dressed, cleanshaven, evidently a gentleman. Blood was flowing from the wound, but he was done for, dead as a herring right then.

I thought things over. Had the girl stabbed him after she entered the apartment? Perhaps she had, perhaps she hadn’t. If she hadn’t, who had? I closed the door and made a quick search of the flat. There was no other person within, and there was no evidence that anyone had been in the place. The man had been sitting reading, and had evidently got up to open the door. Somehow, he had been stabbed, stabbed by someone he had no reason to fear, for there was no evidence of a struggle, just the murdered man, the knife and the blood.

It was no place for a crook. To have been caught in that flat would have been first-degree murder. I had no business remaining there for a second, but I wanted to find out a little more. It seemed impossible that the girl with the mole on her hand could have committed the crime, but who else? True, there had been a sound before she entered the room, but that might or might not have meant anything. The man had been stabbed just as the girl entered that flat. Had she known that she had another mission to perform that night? A mission of murder? That might have accounted for her terrified manner, her preoccupation.

I made a quick round of the apartment. Evidently, from opened envelopes, old letters and bookmarks, the man was one R. C. Rupert, but who R. C. Rupert was or what he did was beyond me. I had no time to make a thorough investigation. It was no place for Ed Jenkins. Known crooks can’t be found in rooms with murdered men without having a hempen knot placed under their ears. I got out and kept my foot pretty well on the throttle after I was in the car.

Back in my apartment I went over my evening’s collection. The Helen Chadwick papers came first, and my fingers almost trembled as I sorted them out. They seemed to be in order, everything O. K.

However, it’s better to be sure than sorry, and I had secured a complete list of the outstanding papers from the lawyer who had enjoyed Chadwick’s confidence in his lifetime. Helen had introduced me to him, told him I could be trusted, and he had given me a complete list. Probably no one knew such a list was obtainable. It wouldn’t have been but for two things, one of them being that Chadwick had told his lawyer everything without reservations, and the other that the lawyer was one of those men who have photographic memories. He had checked out a list containing each and every paper that could be used to implicate the Chadwick name.

I checked the papers over with the list. Two papers were missing; a letter and a contract.

In a cold rage I rechecked the contents of that envelope. There could be no mistaking the fact. The big crook with the icy eyes hadn’t known that I could check up on him. He supposed that I only knew there were papers outstanding of the nature of the papers in that envelope. He couldn’t have foreseen that I could tell if he had held out any on me. Either or both of those two papers would have been as deadly as all. Any of them would have ruined the Chadwick name, have blackened the memory of one who was esteemed as a man of integrity, have killed the widow, have exposed the daughter to scorn as the child of a crook. Society is like that. Chadwick was revered, respected in business and social circles. His standing was unquestioned. His widow and daughter were of the inner circle, of the elect. Let this scandal get out and they would be ostracized overnight. Of course Chadwick had been framed, had been blackmailed, but Chadwick was dead. He couldn’t explain how it had happened.

I put the papers back in the envelope. They were useless. The two outstanding documents made those I possessed without any real value. However, I knew who had those missing papers. That letter and the contract had been taken and were being held by the big man with the icy eyes and the Chinatown office.

His attempt to double-cross me relieved me from any obligation to him. I took out the envelope which bore the number 543290 and looked it over. I couldn’t tamper with those seals without showing that the envelope had been opened. The wax was thin, brittle, had been pressed down with a coin of some rare design, apparently some old Roman coin.

There were other ways. I took a photographic film, pressed it closely against the envelope in a darkened room, then placed the envelope over the white light of a printing box. It took me four attempts to get the proper exposure, but I finally got a film which showed pretty plainly what was in that envelope. The film was a mass of crisscrossed lines, lines which were vague and indistinct, but which could be followed. I made a print on rough paper, retouched the lines with a black pencil, and then began to separate all the lines which sloped in the same direction.

It was daylight before I had the film deciphered. A folded sheet of paper, covered with writing, was within that envelope, and that paper was a will. The crisscross effect of the lines was because of the folds in the paper. I hadn’t been able to get all the words, but I got enough to see that the document purported to be the holographic will of one Stanley Brundage, and that by its terms it left everything to a former wife who had been divorced. There were two witnesses, whose names were not entirely clear. One of them looked like Davids, or something similar, and the other like Roberts.

I set aside the print, studied the envelope a minute, then stretched and decided I’d take a turn in the morning air.

The east was getting rosy, and over the city there was that cool hush which precedes the dawn. A late car whizzed down the boulevard a couple of blocks away, and a light truck came down the street, distributing the morning papers. I would get my paper at the door of my apartment later in the morning, but, in the meantime, I picked up the rolled newspaper which lit on a neighboring lawn and idly read it.

The murder of R. C. Rupert was reported, and there was the usual smear, a sketch of his career, the story of finding the body, the checkup of his flat, and a diagram showing a black Maltese cross marking the spot where the body was found.

I read of the man’s career. It seems he was an attorney who had started in practice for himself after having been identified for several years with Attorney L. A. Daniels. Daniels, I read, specialized on corporate and probate practice, and Rupert had been with him for more than ten years, finally leaving to open an office of his own, in which he had been very successful.

I rolled up the paper, put it back on the lawn, looked at the golden sun, stretched, yawned, and suddenly sprinted back toward my apartment. I had an idea.

With the information I now had there was nothing to it. Strokes on the film which had puzzled me came out with startling clarity, once I knew their meaning. In place of being signed by Davids and Roberts as witnesses, the will was witnessed by L. A. Daniels and R. C. Rupert.

I thought that over. The envelope contained a will. This will was to be placed in a certain safe, and another envelope probably removed. This will was a counterfeit will, but it was to be found in a lawyer’s safe. There were two witnesses to that will, either one of whom could and would pronounce it a forgery. One of those witnesses had been murdered within two hours of the time I had contracted to open the safe so that the will might be substituted.

Naturally the assumption would be that the safe I was to open was in the office of L. A. Daniels. It was also proper to presume that the attorney himself would be allowed to live as long as there was no necessity for admitting the will to probate. It would not do to murder the two witnesses to that will just before it was produced. The police might check up on the two deaths in connection with the two signatures. One of the men would be placed out of the way first. The other would be allowed to live until the will was to be admitted to probate or until sufficient time had elasped so that the police would not become suspicious of the real motive for the murders.

I picked up a suitcase, looked up the office address of L. A. Daniels, got in my machine and was on my way.

Getting into the office of the lawyer offered no obstacles. Office buildings are a cinch, and the locks are all made to open with a master key. The safe was another matter. As soon as I saw it I realized why the crooks who wanted it opened had been forced to make terms with me. It could have been crashed by a good safe man, but to open it without leaving so much as a scratch on it, or interfering with the combination, was another matter.

My system of opening safes is both simple and complicated. It consists of a combination of technical knowledge with the sound magnification offered by radio amplification. I magnify the sounds of the interior mechanism several thousand times, and I know what to listen for, how to interpret each and every sound which comes through the earphones. Even so, I was half an hour getting that safe open.

I wanted to check my suspicions, and I was right. Within that safe, in a compartment marked “WILLS,” I found a series of numbered envelopes, and there was a cross index system in a little card drawer. I ran through the cards under “B” and found Brundage listed as number 543290. The envelopes were filed in numerical order. The 543 was apparently merely a file classification, as the envelopes ran from 543001 to 543450. They were all sealed with a very brittle sealing wax which was smeared over their flaps in great blotches, and pressed down with the same Roman coin.

I had seen all I needed. I made a note of the combination, closed the safe, packed my radio safe outfit in the suitcase and went back to my apartment. Someone would find that double-crossing Ed Jenkins was no laughing matter, and somehow, some time, I would get the missing papers from the Chadwick file. Also I would find out more of the girl with the mole on her hand. I thought of the Weasel, his warning, the barking of those pistol shots. There was more to this than appeared on the surface.

However, that could wait. In the meantime I had an appointment with this chap, Colby, whoever he might be. There was a chance for a few hours’ sleep before that time, and I knew I would need lots of sleep before I got through with that case. It was up to me to keep one jump ahead of the organized crooks who were seeking to use me as a cat’s-paw.

Charles Colby was attired in the height of fashion. Very apparently he hated himself. Offhand, I sized him up as a man of two gods, a mirror and a checkbook. Money hunger was stamped on his face, and vanity in his eyes. He came into the apartment, introduced himself, and sat down with a patronizing manner.

“I am a lawyer, Mr. Jenkins, a lawyer who never overlooks the interests of a client. It happens that another lawyer has some documents in his safe which incriminate my client. I want those documents. I understand arrangements have been made so that you will open the safe.”

He stopped and looked at me shrewdly.

I sized him up. His eyes were small, blinking and watery. He seemed like a creature of the night, a nocturnal rat, who was afraid of the light. He had a great nose that stuck out in front of his face, and twitched from time to time like a rabbit’s — or like a rat’s. Aside from that he was good enough looking. He was shaved and massaged until the skin was a soft pink, and his hair was plastered down with some sort of varnish that gave forth an oily perfume, and made the black locks glisten and sparkle in the light. His collar was a great, four-inch affair, and the red tie, that blazoned forth its silken greeting, struck the eyes with the force of a blow. His trousers were creased into a knife-like edge and the socks below would have warmed up the ankles of a stone statue.

“Where is this safe?”

His nose twitched, his watery eyes blinked and he smacked his lips. “Ah, that will be disclosed in due time. It was a little idea of my own that we… er… protect ourselves on that. You will be blindfolded, Mr. Jenkins, conducted to this safe, then open it, and again be blindfolded.

“I am a lawyer, Jenkins, one of those lawyers who overlooks nothing, who plans on everything. Every move in my campaign has been planned out, has been gone over carefully. Others may act haphazardly, but not Charles Colby. I plan in advance. You have an envelope, Jenkins? An envelope with seals and a number that you were to give to me… Ah, yes. Thank you.”

He took the envelope, blinked his eyes at it, then, somehow acting as though his great nose was more to be trusted than his eyes, he thrust it under the beak and smelled it. His nostrils twitched, his pale tongue licked his lips, and his small eyes sparkled.

“Ah, yes, yes indeed,” he crooned to himself, letting his fingers caress the envelope.

“What time will suit you on this safe?” he asked, after a bit. “We can handle the job any time between nine-thirty and midnight.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Make it about midnight. That’s as good as any.”

He nodded. “I’ll be here with a machine. Now, Jenkins, you are about to have a novel experience. You are dealing with the master minds of crookdom. If you follow instructions and do not seek to double-cross it will be well. But remember that we will know your every move, your innermost thoughts. I will not seek to defend the ethics of what I am doing, but I will tell the whole world that I’m doing it up brown. What I do I do well. You’ll be caught if you try to slip over a thing. Just open this safe and then ask no questions, that’s your job. I’ve planned…”

I interrupted his song of self-praise. When he got to chanting that he seemed as though he’d be good for an hour. He intoned it as though he was taking part in some long-winded ceremony.

“Be here at twelve then,” I snapped and got up.

He took out a gaudy, perfumed handkerchief, wiped the moisture from beneath his pale eyes, twitched his nose, bowed, and was gone.

So he was a master mind of crookdom, and he wasn’t going to let me know the safe I was to open, know where it was, or anything about it, eh? I chuckled at that. It was a good thing I’d spotted that safe, too. Otherwise I’d have had to let this shyster see me working with the radio outfit, and I didn’t advertise my methods to the underworld at large. He’d sure be surprised when he saw me walk up to that safe as a perfect stranger, jiggle the dials and open it. I’d written down the combination, and I knew it as though it had been my own safe.

I gave him half an hour to get well away, and then went out to look up Stanley Brundage. From all of the activities that were being engaged in about his will, I’d have said that Stanley Brundage, whoever he might be, was a poor life insurance risk.

Investigation showed that they wouldn’t need to do any dirty work there. Brundage was a real estate operator, and he was slipping away fast. He had some obscure, wasting disease, and the end was merely a matter of days. He had a daughter by a former marriage, and a wife who was to be divorced, but had, as yet, only secured an interlocutory decree. The estate would consist of a goodly lump of property, property that was worth fighting for and over.

I could see the whole situation. L. A. Daniels had drawn a will, a will which Brundage had written himself at the suggestion and under the direction of the lawyer. R C. Rupert had been one of the witnesses to that will, and Daniels had been the other. That will probably left everything to the daughter, at any rate cut off the divorced wife without a penny.

The game was to forge a will which would be good enough to get by without either subscribing witness being alive. This forged will cut off the daughter and left everything to the divorced wife. The question of where that will was found and how it was produced would be determining factors in the event of a fight. They would get at the lawyer’s safe, switch wills, destroy the genuine and leave the forgery.

I’d reasoned that far the night before, but now I saw the murder program — if I could give it that name — a little more clearly. Rupert could die at any time. They just wanted him out of the way. Daniels, however, was different. Upon his death a search of his safe would be made, and the wills he was keeping would probably be returned to the persons who had made them. If Daniels were to die before Brundage passed away and the Brundage will should be returned and found to be a forgery… That would never do. They would wait for Brundage to die, and then would almost immediately murder Daniels. Then the executor of Daniels’ estate would find the Brundage will in the safe, and everything would seem to be regular.

Of course. I might have slipped a bit here and there on a detail, but that would be pretty near the general scheme of the thing, and I wouldn’t have missed it much one way or another. That lawyer with the plastered hair, the red tie and the watery eyes was like an open book to me. I’ve met his kind before.

Because they’d lied to me on those Chadwick papers, I d have told the whole outfit to go jump in a lake, only I wanted to get more of a line on that fat crook who sat so quietly in the Chinese den, his icy eyes gleaming unblinkingly through the semi-darkness. That man was a master crook. He was one to be respected and perhaps feared, but he had the missing Chadwick papers, and I wanted those papers.

I thought things over until I felt certain that I’d gone through the entire situation as well as could be expected, and then I rolled in and got an afternoon’s sleep.

Midnight. The clock on the Court House boomed forth the twelve deep strokes.

As the last deep chime died away there was a knock at the door. I opened it. There were two visitors. Charles Colby, the lawyer with the perfumed hair, and the girl I knew as Maude Enders; the girl with the mole on her left hand. The girl was nervous, white, shaking. The lawyer smiling, debonair, urbane.

They greeted me and entered. In his right hand the lawyer was carrying a blindfold, a mask without eye-holes, one of the most foolproof and quickly adjusted blindfolds there is, one of the type used in lodge work for blindfolding the candidate before the dirty work commences. Evidently he believed in being prepared, this lawyer.

He smirked and smiled.

“Right on time, Mr. Jenkins. You see I keep my appointments. Right on the dot in spite of a busy day, a very busy day.”

That seemed to be a conversational lead. He stopped expectantly as though he waited for me to say something. I hated to disappoint him.

“So you’ve been busy?”

“Indeed yes. I’ve been retained by the relatives of R. C. Rupert, the man who was murdered yesterday. They want me to assist the county authorities in locating and prosecuting the murderer. Already I’ve uncovered one clue, one very live clue. I find that the man and woman who occupy the flat above Rupert’s saw a young woman rushing frantically down the stairs about the time of the murder. This woman had come from Rupert’s flat, and seemed to be actually running away. The elevator was out of order at the time and she had to use the stairs. They had never seen her before, but they had a good look at her face, and they could recognize her if they saw her again.

“There were many things that made me think the murder had been pulled off by a woman, even before I got this evidence. I have told these two people to tell no one of their information or knowledge concerning this phase of the case until I tell them to. In the meantime I shall endeavor to locate the woman, and I think I can put my hand on her.

“You’ve read of the murder, of course, Jenkins.”

I nodded, and looked over at the woman with the mole on her hand. She was as pale as death, swaying in the chair. I thought she’d even faint.

So that was the lay of the land. Not only had the fat crook used this jane to commit a murder, but he’d even planted witnesses that could identify her, and got this shyster lawyer to spill just enough information to let the girl know they could hang a murder charge on her whenever they got good and ready. Whoever this girl with the mole was, she wanted to watch her step. Her neck was in the noose now, and there’d be no turning back. I had wondered at the temerity of this lawyer in allowing himself to get tangled up in this safe business where too many people knew his identity. Now I commenced to understand. I was a crook and my word would be valueless. They had a murder charge they could get the girl on any time. Colby, of course, was not the real name of the lawyer. I had taken the precaution of verifying that. There was no Charles Colby listed in the telephone book; but, Colby or not, he could be identified readily. That beak and those eyes were identification tags that couldn’t be overlooked. However, he had nothing to fear.

“All right, Mr. Jenkins. Let us be on our way.”

He advanced with the blindfold, and I let him adjust it. I was going to play into his hands, let him think I was a good safe mechanic, but that was all, merely a common crook with no intelligence. I wanted them all to underestimate me.

We went down to the car, and the lawyer on one side and the girl on the other assisted me into the closed car. I had been wondering about the girl, why she was along, but now I found out. This guy, Colby, was taking no chances on me peeking through the blindfold while he was busy with the car. The girl sat beside me, her hands holding my head, keeping the hood tight over my eyes. Her soft hands continually fluttered over my face, and I could smell the delicate perfume of her clothing as she bent over me, watching that blindfold continuously. Also I could feel that she was trembling.

Knowing in advance where we were going, I was able to tell approximately how we reached the building. There was the brilliant illumination of a main artery of the city, a couple of sharp turns, and then gloom. That much I could tell through the blindfold. Evidently we were in an alley, approaching the office building from the rear.

I was helped from the car and into a freight elevator. Slowly we ascended, there was the sound of an opening door, and the girl with the mole guided me down the flagged corridor of an office building. Colby went on ahead, and I could hear the faint scratching of a key as he fitted it into a lock. The girl guided me directly into an office room, and I could smell the musty closeness of the stale air.

There was a minute or two while Colby was adjusting things to his satisfaction, and I could hear him pulling down the window shades, evidently shutting out any light which might come in from the street. He was thorough after a fashion, this Colby.

At length he came to me and removed the hood. I was standing before a safe, a safe which was illuminated by the beam of a very small flashlight. The rest of the office was in darkness. Only the door and nickeled dials were visible on the safe, none of the surroundings showed in the carefully adjusted beam of that flashlight.

“Now, Jenkins, do your stuff,” he whispered, bending forward until the oily perfume of his glossy hair surrounded me in a sickening stench.

I reached out and touched the dials.

“And here is where I get a lesson in safe opening,” went on the lawyer, still in that same whisper. “I have heard of your ability, Jenkins, and we have wondered how you did it. Now I’ll find out.”

He would, like fun, but I didn’t put him wise. I nodded and began to spin the dials of the safe, back and forth, back and forth. Then I stopped spinning them and placed my nose close to the door, as though I was smelling the metal. Next I took out my knife and tapped the metal carefully, listening to the sounds. I might have been a physician sounding the chest of a patient. When I had indulged in enough horseplay to mystify him, I confidently returned the knife to my pocket.

“I have the combination now,” I whispered, and began to turn the dials with the easy confidence of a man opening his own safe. There came a click from the combination and I shot back the bolts and swung the huge door open.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” exclaimed the lawyer in genuine awe.

“Ladies present,” I reminded him, with a touch of sarcasm.

He showed his true character for a moment. “Ladies, hell!” he remarked, as he dove into the interior of the safe.

In a moment he emerged with envelope number 543290 in his hand, and carefully he substituted the envelope I had given him, then he himself closed the safe and spun the dials.

“I’ll never be satisfied until this envelope is destroyed,” he said, and, with the words, pulled over a brass cuspidor and struck a match. The flame crackled and snapped up the envelope. The sealing wax began to melt and sputter, dropping into the cuspidor. The ashes dropped and then the last corner of the envelope was consumed. The lawyer took a fountain pen and began to mash up the black, charred fragments of paper. When he had finished that will was destroyed. Beyond a few blackened bits of paper and a red drop of sealing wax in the bottom of the cuspidor there was no trace of the envelope which the safe had so closely guarded, envelope 543290.

“Now we’re finished,” exulted the lawyer. “Jenkins, you’re simply great. I can make a fortune with you, man! You acted as though you had been familiar with that safe for twenty years, and it’s supposed to be one of the best safes in the country. You’re a wonder!”

The girl said nothing. By pressing back so that my shoulder was against her I could feel her shiver. Whatever her connection with this gang, she had something hanging over her head that would leave her no peace of mind. She was in their power, and she knew it.

The blindfold was again adjusted, and the car swung out around the city, circling block after block so that I could not follow directions, and finally landing me before the door of my apartment house. The lawyer was taking no chances on my even getting a good look at the car, lest I should be able to identify it in some way, but escorted me to my own apartment before he removed the hood.

When they had left I got busy.

I have a reputation of being able to slip through the fingers of the police. To be wanted in a dozen states with one’s picture available for publication, with placards distributed, and with police notified, and to still keep at liberty require something in the way of more than average ability in the art of disguise.

A knowledge of Chinese manners, customs, language and psychology has always been a big help to me, particularly in the West. The Cantonese dialect is a funny thing. There are two major tones or octaves, and four varying intonations in each octave. This gives each sound eight different meanings, depending on the octave and the tone. For instance, ngau means cow if it is spoken one way, means dog if spoken in another, and crazy if spoken a little differently, and so on. It’s not an easy language to learn, and the Chinks don’t help any. They don’t like to have the whites pry into their affairs. As far as I know, I’m the only crook that can talk the lingo, and whoever that fat bird with the icy eyes might be, I fancied I could give him cards and spades in Chinatown and come out on top.

Naturally, my knowledge of Chinese language is kept pretty much to myself. I don’t let the crooks, the police or even the Chinks themselves, know that I know it. It wouldn’t do to have that information get out. Then the police would look for me in Chinatown first.

My Chinese disguise is that of a white-haired old heathen with straggling white whiskers that come well down on the chest. The Chinks respect age, and an old man can have certain eccentricities which a younger man couldn’t get away with.

Half an hour after Colby left me in my apartment I was shuffling around Chinatown, an old man, slipping along the streets at a late hour. The legitimate stores were closed. The Chinese merchants were in bed, but here and there storerooms kept open. Some of the places ran on a twenty-four-hour shift. Also I knew that the storerooms were merely the outside entrances. Once back of the main rooms and the rabbit-warren passages all ran together anyway.

When I had a good chance I slipped on back and began to explore. I had a pretty good mental map of the place, but there were a couple of things I didn’t know for sure, and wanted to find out about. I’d managed to keep in pretty close touch with Chinatown and quite a few of the Chinks knew the old man that showed up once in a while and shuffled around on mysterious errands. The room that I’d been in when old icy-eyes gave me my instructions looked like the old office of the Fa Kee lottery company. They’d gone out of business a while back, and there had never been very much said about what happened to the place.

I hit the rabbit-warren and began to shuffle around.

“Hoh shai mah,” intoned a guard doubtfully.

I get a kick out of the Chinese salutation. “Hoh,” that means good, “shai kai,” that means the whole blamed world, and “mah,” that’s the sign of a question. What the Chink really inquires in his salutation is whether everything in the world is good. It amuses me to see a Chink who is steeped to the very slant of his eyes in intrigue, foxier than any fox, smooth as a pane of window glass, bow and inquire of his visitors if the whole world and everything in it is good.

Gravely, I returned his salutation.

“Hoh shai kai,” I asserted, answering his question with an assertion.

“Where goes the father?” asked the Chink.

I fixed him with a stem gaze.

“The rooms of the Fa Kee Company,” I said.

He smiled.

“The Fa Kee Company has suffered losses, and has gone out of business for three moons to let the luck change. Too many ten-spot tickets caused a break of the bank.”

I nodded, but shuffled forward.

“The venerable one should be careful not to intrude upon their rooms,” went on the guard. “What is it you wish?”

I flickered my eyes in a gesture of aged impatience.

“Is it then given to a babbling brook to question the placid surface of the lake?”

He shrugged his shoulders and went on about his business.

By devious wanderings and workings I got into the lease of the Fa Kee Company, and that was all the good it did me. The place had been cleaned out. The teakwood desk, the expensive tapestries, the Oriental rugs, had all gone. The place where I had been received was barren, empty, devoid of occupancy. The place had served its purpose and had then been abandoned.

I was puzzled, but not for long. In a little room to the rear there were three Chinamen playing at their everlasting domino games. They were furtive, swift-moving Chinks, men who were not of the usual type. To one side, in a darkened corner, sat a fourth Chink, silent, watchful, his beady eyes darting about. I watched the game for an interval, and watched the players more than the game.

At length one of them made a signal, and they changed around. The watcher in the corner came over and took a hand in the game, and one of the players went back to the corner. Apparently they were on guard, Chinese gunmen, watching and waiting. In China the art of murder is one of the professions. Each tong has its paid murderers. In time of need one does not commit his own murders any more than he fills his own teeth or does his own doctoring. He hires his professional murderer to do the job for him.

These four men were hired murderers, imported gunmen who knew their onions.

“The aged one will find the air better elsewhere,” remarked one of the players, significantly.

“When one has attained age he requires but little air,” I retorted. “Youth takes much air, for it must breathe and speak needlessly. Age needs but to breathe.”

They exchanged glances.

“Father,” advised one, rising courteously, “we wait with a mission. At any day, at any hour, there may be fumes which will choke the air, the fumes of powder. The venerable one will find it difficult to vanish quickly before the police come to investigate.”

I bowed my head slightly.

“I thank you. Youth has power of quick motion and trusts to flight. Age has learned the lesson of poise and trusts to wisdom. Have no fear.”

With that I turned slowly, dignifiedly, and shuffled off, on my tour about the place. So they waited, did they? Waited the coming of one who was to be shot? Was it possible that icy-eyes had left a reception committee for me? That Ed Jenkins, the crook, was expected to enter that room, and that when he entered he was not to leave? The finding of a crook, dead in Chinatown, would hardly be expected to bother the police. If that crook were Ed Jenkins, the police could rather be expected to heave a sigh of relief.

I shuffled out into an all-night tea-room. I wanted to sit and think. At a small teakwood table I had a cup of tea and sat, stroking my beard, running over things in my mind. The good actor becomes a part of the character he is impersonating. To carry Occidental habits of thought into Chinatown while disguised as an old Chinaman would be to court discovery. Knowing the psychology of the Chinks as I did, I always managed to think the part as well as to speak it and look it. As I sat there I was really tempering my thoughts with the philosophy of the Chinese, a philosophy which sees time in a cycle of ages, rather than in the span of a lifetime.

Calmly, philosophically, I went over the events of the past few days, thinking, planning. From curtained booths to the right there came the occasional sound of spooning couples who had picked the half-light of a Chinese restaurant as the place to finish up their wild night. Also there was another sound, the steady sound of sobs, the sound of a woman crying softly.

Moved more by curiosity than otherwise, I went to the booth from which the sounds came and threw aside the curtain, slipping within.

A girl sat on the cushioned bench, her head thrown forward on the table, the tea dishes pushed to one side. Her arms were twined about her face, and she was sobbing her heart out. There was a mole on the skin of the left hand.

Quietly I sat down across the table, assumed a dignified position and began to stroke my beard.

“Suffering follows wrong as the wheel follows the path of the ox,” I said, making my voice thin and reedy, speaking English with an accent.

Startled, she straightened at the sound of my voice. It was the girl I had known as Maude, the girl against whom I had been warned.

“Who are you?”

I stroked my beard. “It is the function of age to counsel youth.”

She looked me over with her red-rimmed eyes. There in the soft light of the curtained booth she stood no chance of recognizing me. My disguises are good. I fancied I could tell what was on her mind, but I wasn’t sure.

“I did not kill him,” she said abruptly, “but I could have saved him. He went to his death, and there is the death of another, a friend, a man who should mean nothing to me and yet who fascinates me.”

I stroked my beard again, keeping my eyes on her face.

“Death is but a sleep,” I said; “the sooner we sleep, the sooner we wake.”

Her head fell forward on her arms.

“I must warn him,” she said, “and if I warn him I will hang. They have me in their power. What will I do, oh, God, what will I do?”

I placed my hand on her shoulder.

“Do nothing,” I said. “I will warn him.”

“You?” she asked, half rising… “Who are you, anyway? There is a soothing strength to your touch. Your hand on my shoulder thrills me. How do you know what I am talking about?”

I had gone too far. That touch might have told her much. She was sensitive, this woman with the mole on her hand. I slipped through the curtains, shuffled along the passageway and into the kitchen in the back. White girls would not be allowed in here. I went down the back stairs, through some more passageways and out into the night. Putting two and two together, I began to see a great light.

I went back to my apartment, removed my disguise, and waited. Something seemed to tell me that I was booked to be framed with a murder. A certain fat, icy-eyed crook and myself were going to have an accounting one of these days. In the meantime I would wait and see what developed. I knew too much to suit him, and he was perfectly willing that the law should silence my lips. No, that would hardly do. I might make a confession that would tally too closely with the known facts. Nevertheless, a murder was impending and I was to be removed. Putting two and two together again, what more plausible than that the murder should be committed and that I should be killed on the scene of the crime? Suppose I had walked into that apartment where R. C. Rupert had been killed, had walked in while the body was still warm, and suppose a hidden accomplice had killed me, shot me down from ambush, and then telephoned the police that he had seen me walk into Rupert’s flat, thought that I acted suspiciously, followed, saw me kill Rupert, had called upon me to surrender, and when I had resisted had shot at me. The police would have taken him into custody pending an investigation, have found out that the dead man who was charged with the murder was Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, and released the man who gave the information, with a vote of thanks. He would be a benefactor to society, one who had caught a notorious crook in the act of murder and killed him.

So I began to run over the whole plan in my mind, putting myself in the shoes of the others, wondering what I would do in their place. Almost I thought I would vanish from my apartment, and remain in concealment until the whole affair had been concluded, but there were those confounded Chadwick papers. I had to have them, and the only way I could keep in contact with the fat crook with the icy eyes was by continuing to play into his hand. The next time I established a point of contact with him he would not vanish into thin air and leave a squad of hired murderers to wait for me.

On the third day I received a letter. It was typewritten, unsigned.

I read the letter and grinned. It might be a genuine warning, and it might be a plant. I shouldn’t have touched the girl. Women are sensitive to a man’s touch, and my hand had more warmth and strength than would have been found in the hand of an aged Chinaman. I was sorry I had made that mistake, but it had shown me a weakness in my disguise.

If the letter was not a genuine warning, it was part of a plant. If the latter, I couldn’t see just how it would fit in, but I couldn’t forget the look in the eyes of the Weasel when he had warned me of the girl with the mole on her left hand. And then there had been the matter of those pistol shots, and the death of the Weasel. Was it because he had been followed to my apartment that he had been made the target of the pistols of that death car?

I shrugged my shoulders.

There is a limit to what a man can think out. To attempt to go beyond that limit involves the mind in a tiresome race around a circle. It is profitless and worse than useless, for then, when the time for action comes, the mind is weary. I prefer to think as far as I can see my way clearly, and then sit back, waiting for subsequent events to develop additional information. In that way my mind is always receptive, fresh, ready to act when the emergency comes.

Another three days passed, and then the morning paper told me of the death of Stanley Brundage. There was half a page of eulogy, of his life, his business activities. I didn’t stop to read it all. I knew I was going to need plenty of sleep, and I rolled in and slept soundly throughout the day.

Colby called on the telephone late that afternoon.

“I want to see you, Jenkins. Can you come to my office?”

I smiled at that. He had no office — not under the name of Colby, anyway.

“Maybe I’d better run up there, though,” he added quickly. “I can run right up, and it’s a matter of importance.”

“All right,” I said, and hung up the receiver.

Ten minutes later and he was at the door, nervous, excited, his eyes blinking and watering, his nose twitching, sniffing, his mouth working, the pale tongue continually flicking the lips.

“Jenkins, I am too rushed to explain here, but there were certain papers you were to have as reward for opening that safe, and I have just found out that you were double-crossed. I want you to come out to my house tonight and go over it with me. In a way I feel responsible since you were doing work at my request, and I want to get those papers for you. At any rate, I can give you some information that will be of value.”

I looked at him quickly, letting an expression of dumb surprise flicker over my face.

“Why, I thought they were all there,” I said, openmouthed, stupid.

He shook his head, adjusted his gaudy tie and patted his sleek, oily hair. Apparently he was well satisfied with himself. He was playing me for a mechanical dumbbell, one who was clever at safe-opening, but no good for anything else.

“No, they held out on you. Come to my place at nine tonight, and I’ll give you the lowdown on the whole thing.”

I took out a pencil and held it over my notebook.

“Your place is where?”

“3425 South Hampshird,” he said, and watched me like a hawk as he said it.

Innocently I wrote down the address. There was not so much as the suspicion of an expression on my face. The address was that of the house of L. A. Daniels. He was watching my face to see if, by any chance, I knew. The rat-nosed, water-eyed crook would have stood more chance reading expression on the sheet of my notebook than on my face just then. I wouldn’t have lived as long as I have if I’d been in the habit of letting my face tell my thoughts.

“Just ring the doorbell twice when you come, Jenkins,” he said, “and be sure that you get there at nine sharp. The events of the next hour will be of great interest to you.”

I nodded and pocketed the notebook.

“I’ll be there,” I said, and showed him to the door. His hair was scenting up the apartment and I wanted to be rid of the oily rat before I was tempted to choke him with that red necktie of his.

I couldn’t have much of a line on what was to come, but one thing I could be sure of. From the time when I rang that doorbell twice, things would move with the precision of clockwork, with the bewildering speed which marks the swift efficiency of an execution at San Quentin prison. They had had too long to think things over, to lay their plans. If I was to place any monkey wrenches in the wheels of their machinery it must be done before I rang that doorbell.

I got in my machine and swung out toward Hampshird Drive.

3425 sets well back from the street, a great pile of a house, surrounded by shrubbery, surmounted by strange turrets and architectural gingerbread. It was a relic of older times, times back in 1910 or 1911, when the district was just opening up, and was considered well out in the country; the subdivisions were in acres, and the houses were built as country places. Now the district was pretty well in the heart of the city as far as the apartment section was concerned. Most of the old houses had been taken down because they occupied too much ground space, and square apartment houses and flats had taken their places. This building was one of the older type.

I parked the car a block away and made a complete survey of the premises. There was no guard about that I could find, and I watched pretty carefully. At eight-thirty I picked one of the back windows and dropped in. The house seemed pretty well deserted. There was a light in one of the front rooms on the ground floor, and I gumshoed along the corridor, keeping well within the shadows, looking for a chance to get a line on the stuff that I wanted.

There came the sound of voices from the front room, and I picked out the tones of Charles Colby. He was talking in a low, strained voice, as though he himself was interloping, which he was.

“Now remember, when he runs, shoot. Don’t take any chances, and don’t wait. Shoot. I’ll see that he gets stampeded.”

The reply was a grunt. Evidently the other fellow was one of those who are strong on action, but weak on conversation.

Again there was silence, broken by the creaking of a chair as it rocked back and forth. “We’ll take him right upstairs to the study,” went on rat-face nervously. “As soon as we get him in, we’ll start the action, and then you get ready.”

That gave me the clue I wanted. I slipped up the stairway, and finally located a sort of study on the northwest corner of the house; a long, gloomy corridor stretched the length of the upper floor, and the study was the last room on the north to open from it.

The room was in a half-light, a small fire in the fireplace making things cheery without throwing out too much warmth. A big chair was before the fire, and at first I thought it was empty. There were great bookcases on the walls, heavy rugs on the floor, some elaborate ornaments of various kinds, including statuary and paintings.

There was a slight movement from the chair, and then I saw that it was occupied. A small man with muttonchop whiskers was reclining before the fire, his toes stretched out, his head thrown back, resting. I stepped up to the chair, an idea forming in my mind.

It wasn’t until my weight rested on the arm of the chair that the man opened his eyes with a start. I was looming in the dark above him.

“Not a sound,” I said.

He sized me up, his sharp, steely eyes going over me from head to foot, but there was no sign of nervousness, no quick intake of the breath that would mean he was getting ready to scream. This lawyer was an old campaigner, one who had seen much of life, and considerable of death. He wasn’t to be stampeded. I heaved a sigh of relief. I had hoped he’d be like that.

“Thank God you can control your nerves and listen to reason,” I told him. “Listen, I’m Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, you’ve probably heard of me or read of me, and I’m here to do you a favor.”

He nodded, placed his finger to his lips and began to whisper.

“I have been warned that you were going to try and kill me. A detective agency told me they had the inside tip on what your plans were, and that they wanted to send out a couple of men to guard me. I’m in your power if you mean evil. If you don’t, tell me what you are here for. I’m an old man, and I don’t care greatly when I die, but I like to know what’s going on about me.”

While he was talking he was adjusting himself in his chair, moving his arms and hips as though to get a better view of me. He was so quiet, and so careful to speak in a whisper that he nearly had me fooled. As it was, I grabbed the gun he was twisting around from under his coat just before he had the drop on me.

I grinned at him, and he smiled back. He was an old war-horse, and he accepted the fortunes of war as they fell.

“Now listen,” I said, jabbing the gun in his ribs to impress upon him the fact that I was in earnest. “I don’t give a damn about you. You’re nothing in my young life, but there’s a plot on to get you out of the way and to get me killed. They’ll murder you and claim that I did the job. Get me?”

He still smiled wanly.

“That should interest me, but why should anyone want to kill me?”

I handed it to him straight, sticking the gun against his ribs from time to time, just reminding him that he wasn’t in any position to start anything.

“You and Rupert signed a will as witnesses. Rupert is dead — that’s one witness gone. You’ll be the next. Then a forged will can be probated.”

He chuckled outright. I really believe the shrivelled-up old campaigner was enjoying the situation.

“That sounds all right, only the genuine will would be in my safe, and they’d never get it out. That safe is absolutely and positively burglar-proof.”

“Yeah,” I explained, wearily. “They all are. This one of yours opens when you turn the small knob five times to the right to forty-six, the big one three times to the left to fifty, then the small knob four times to the left to thirty-one, the big one twice to the right to ten, the little one three times to the right to seventy, and the big one once to the left to ninety, then slip the little knob to the left until it reaches nineteen, turn the big knob to the right until it stops, and open the door.”

That got him. His eyes got as wide as half-dollars.

“There’s no one on earth that knows the combination of that safe but myself,” he whispered, more to himself than to me.

“And me,” I reminded him. “Now who have you got an appointment with at nine o’clock?”

“With a Mr. DeLamar, the head of the detective agency,” he answered, readily enough.

I smiled. That was all I wanted to know.

“All right,” I told him. “That man is really myself. I am to be brought into this room, and then you are to be murdered while I am here, and probably by someone whom you trust. They wouldn’t have trusted you with a pistol if it hadn’t been intended that the murder was to be pulled while you thought everything was all right. Now do you know a man with plastered, oily, perfumed black hair, little, blue-gray watery eyes, and a big red nose?”

He nodded, studying my face.

“He is in the house visiting my butler. I believe he is the father of the butler, or some relation, an uncle perhaps. I haven’t paid much attention to him.”

I nodded.

“Well, I’ll be going. When I come back just keep silent, no matter what happens. You trust me, and don’t make any noise when I start the fireworks.”

Again he sized me up.

“How do I know that I can trust you? By your own admission you are a crook.”

I got up off the arm of the easy-chair and tossed him his gun. “Don’t trust me. Shoot me if I make a move against you, but don’t interfere otherwise as you value your life.”

He smiled at that.

“Spoken like a man, Jenkins,” he said, “and since you’ve been so frank with me, I’ll tell you something. This man you have described, who is going under the name of Colby, is an impostor. He is a shyster attorney who has offices here in the city, and I saw him once years ago. I have a photographic memory for faces, and I am positive of my identification. When he showed up here under an assumed name, and supposedly as a relation of the butler, I fancied he was up to some deviltry. That’s why I kept the revolver handy. I wanted him to show his hand.”

I patted the little fellow on the shoulder. I sure liked him. He was a man after my own heart, and I only hoped I’d be like him when I got to be his age.

“See you later,” I said, and, with the words, slipped out of the door, hugged the shadows down the corridor, picked a porch window, and dropped into the night.

Five minutes later, on the stroke of nine, I came up the front steps, and rang the bell twice.

“Mr. Colby,” I told the man who appeared at the door.

He was a heavyset fellow, this bird, and he sized me up in a way I didn’t like. It occurred to me that he might be the one to kill Daniels as soon as I got in the room, and I didn’t propose to take any chances with him. His face was coarse, brutal, the face of a killer, and beyond doubt he was in on the death plan, otherwise he would not have introduced Colby as his father.

“Right this way, sir. Mr. Colby is expectin’ you.”

I followed the man up the flight of stairs and down the long corridor. At the door of the study he coughed, knocked, and motioned me to follow.

“Step right in, sir.”

I stepped in, and, as the door closed, I tapped him over the head with a blackjack. It was a swift tap on the temple, and he went bye-bye right then. He was good for at least an hour’s sleep and a hell of a headache when he awoke.

With the sound of the blow the little, shriveled lawyer had jumped from the chair. I motioned for silence, and slammed the butler down in the chair Daniels had vacated, turning the chair so the back was toward the door, and only the top of the butler’s head showed as it rested on the back of the upholstery.

I motioned the lawyer back into the shadows of the dim room. “Get back and stand in the shadow,” I said, and the words were no more than out of my mouth than the door flung open and the little, rat-nosed lawyer popped into the room.

“Ah, Jenkins, thought you had got in the wrong place, did you?”

As he spoke he darted forward. Prepared as I was, I couldn’t anticipate his motions. The very swiftness of the thing took me by surprise. I had expected a few words, something like a quarrel, some statement or other. There was nothing. As he spoke he advanced with hand outstretched, and, managing to get close to the chair, his hand suddenly swooped over and down, and there was the glitter of steel.

I gasped. Casually, as smoothly and easily as though he had merely swatted a fly in passing, he had slipped a big dagger clean to the hilt in the form of the man in the chair.

“Jenkins,” he said, speaking rapidly, “you have killed this man. I saw you do it, and the footman over there saw you do it.” He indicated the man standing in the shadows. “I’m going to be merciful, to give you one chance to escape, but I shall have to report the murder.”

In my time I have seen much cold-blooded disregard for life, but never anything to equal that. The butler’s life blood was spurting out around the haft of the knife, splashing on the flags of the fireplace, and yet this man talked as easily, as casually as though he and I were alone in the room.

“You see, Jenkins, I fooled you. Get started.”

He turned, and flung open the door into the hall, and, as he did so, something about the figure standing back in the shadows caught his eye. Perhaps it was the glint of the light on the pistol which the old man was holding.

He gave one great oath and sprang forward, bending over the form in the chair. As he saw the man’s face, he gave a shriek and rushed to the hall door.

Instantly things began to happen.

The old lawyer shot instantly, and I think he missed. Colby spurted around the door and into the corridor, and then there came two heavy reports, the reports of a shotgun that was probably loaded with buckshot. That had been the trap that was planned for me. I was to run from the room, and the private detective who had “warned” the lawyer against me was to shoot me fleeing red-handed from the scene of the murder. Colby and the butler were to be witnesses.

With the dropping of the bullet-riddled body there came a wild scream from the stairs, the scream of a woman. Also from all about the house there sounded hoarse shouts, the shrilling of police whistles. All hell had broken loose, and there was I, Ed Jenkins, notorious crook, in the center of everything. I fancied the old lawyer would stand up for me, but then there was the matter of that safe combination. He’d naturally be curious to know how I knew about it.

All in all it was one hell of a party.

Again came the scream from the woman. This time nearer. I sprang to the hall. A white figure was bending over the prostrate body. She looked up as she saw me and then gave a glad cry.

It was the girl with the mole on her hand, the girl I had known as Maude Enders.

“Quick, Ed. Come this way. The police are here. There is only one way to go. Quick Ed. This way out!”

She didn’t even see the form of the aged lawyer standing there, his steely eyes twinkling softly, the revolver in his hand.

How she knew the house I don’t know, but know it she did. She swept me into the back of the study, through a doorway in the rear, down a little back passageway, into a small storeroom which had a window opening on a garage, out on the roof of the garage, crouching low, bent double, and we dropped to the ground.

I tried to hold her back. I wanted her to escape, and this seemed like suicide. It was a cinch the police would have the house surrounded. In some manner they had been tipped off. I had rather trusted to the lawyer than to take a chance on the sawed-off shotguns of the officers. However, there was no holding her back, and I remembered the murder of R. C. Rupert. Perhaps she dared not trust her life in the hands of another. To be arrested meant to be identified as the girl who had rushed from that flat while Rupert was bleeding on the floor.

At the back of the garage there was a sudden blurr of motion as a figure detached itself from the shrubbery. I braced myself for the crashing report, the red burst of flame as the shotgun exploded. The police would not ask questions when they were on the trail of Ed Jenkins.

To my surprise the figure seemed not to have seen us but moved back again into the shadow, and the girl and I rushed across the lawn, through a hedge, down the street and into my car.

“Oh, God!” she panted. “I tried to get there in time. I knew the house, but I didn’t know they had framed you. I only knew you were to be trapped in a corridor, but I didn’t know it was in that corridor. How did it happen it was not you that was shot?”

I grinned at her as the machine purred away into the darkness. “Thanks to your warning, I turned the tables on our friend, Mr. Colby.”

She was silent for a while.

“Daniels — did they kill him?”

I shook my head. “I planted another of the crooks in his chair and Colby stabbed him.”

She thought for another moment or two.

“Gee, but you’re thorough when you get started; aren’t you, Ed Jenkins?”

I laughed at that.

“But the genuine will was destroyed. Even if a forgery could be proven to be spurious, the real will would be destroyed and now Brundage is dead.”

She knew a lot about the case, this girl. She puzzled me, and how had she known enough to have told me “this way out” when she rushed out of that house? She was holding something back.

I started to tell her, then thought better of it.

“Let me out here, Ed,” she said. “It would mean my death if they saw me with you now.”

She was right, at that, and I swung the car into the curb.

“Why did you come to the house?” I asked her.

She hung her head. “I wanted to save you, Ed. I prayed I’d be in time.”

“And you ran the gauntlet of the police, and took chances on your own life?”

She made no answer. It was obvious that she had done so.

“Listen, kid,” I told her in a burst of confidence. “I don’t know your connection with this case, but I’ll tell you something. That genuine will was never destroyed. I knew a little about the care and devotion that Brundage girl had shown to her father, and the way the woman had wrecked his life. I slipped up to that safe in Daniels’ office and took out the genuine will and substituted the fake envelope. Then when I gave Colby the envelope I really gave him the genuine will. He, himself, substituted it when I opened the safe the second time, and the envelope he burned was the one containing the fake will.”

She looked at me, her eyes big and round.

“But how could you have known the location of the office, the identity of the man whose safe you were to open?”

I laughed a little. Better not to explain too much to her, to have her guessing a bit.

“That’s a trade secret. Now I’ll tell you something else. With the death of the lawyer there is one witness gone who could implicate you in the Rupert case. You play ball with me, and I’ll try and get the other one where he can’t hurt you. You must know that the fat crook with the icy eyes planted those two witnesses who came up the stairs as you were coming down.”

Her eyes got so big that I thought they would fall from their sockets.

“Good God! How did you know all about that?”

I laughed again.

“Another trade secret. Will you play with me, play fair?”

She brushed back her hair, and nodded, her eyes starry, watching me with awe.

“As far as I can I will, Ed Jenkins,” she whispered, swaying toward me, “and this will seal the bargain.”

With that she tilted her face to mine and gave me a long, clinging kiss. The next moment and she had gathered her skirt about her and was gone.

I sat in the car, my lips tingling with that kiss, it dawning on me that I knew virtually nothing about this girl, except that I had been warned against her by a man who had given his life for the warning, a grim sacrifice to friendship.

Also I knew that somewhere in that great, throbbing city was a crook whose name I did not know, a crook with a fat face, puffy lips and ice-cold eyes. He had two papers that I would get.

Sitting there in the machine I made a vow that I would have those papers and exonerate the girl with the mole from the murder charge that he might place against her. The world would be too small to hold this fat crook with the icy eyes and myself. It would be a battle to the death.

Slowly I drove the car along the boulevard. I had no intention of ever returning to my apartment. After what had happened in the house of L. A. Daniels, after the probating of the genuine Brundage will, this fat crook who fancied himself the master mind of crookdom, would realize that he had been outgeneraled, would understand the challenge I had flung him in the death of his two trusted accomplices, in the switching of wills. I fancied I would hear more of this man.

Smiling grimly, I turned back the windshield so the cooling air of the night would come to my flushed face, and drove aimlessly into the night, looking for a new place to hide, a place from which I could plan my campaign.