Dead Men’s Letters

In Full of Account

The man at the door bowed suavely, his fat face looking like crinkled lard.

“Mr. Philip Conway, I believe. I had quite a hard time locating you, Mr. Conway.”

I stood to one side and motioned him in.

“Come in and have a chair,” I urged, and I said it only because I had caught a glimpse of the house detective prowling around a corner of the corridor.

He strutted into the room with that complacent self-satisfaction which men with fat necks usually assume when they think they have pulled something clever.

“Ah, yes,” he went on, when I had closed and locked the door, “Mr. Philip Conway, whose real name is Ed Jenkins, more generally known to the police of a dozen states as The Phantom Crook. I had a devil of a time finding you, Ed Jenkins.”

His eyes had narrowed like a cat’s, and he was watching my face. On one thing he was right. He certainly had had a devilish time finding me, and I was at a loss to know how he’d done it, but I wasn’t going to let him see so much as a flicker of surprise in my expression. I had been very much incognito when I picked that hotel, and I would gamble that I hadn’t been followed.

“Sit down,” was what I said, and then added, just to jar his self complacency a bit, “I was rather expecting you, you know.”

The fatuous smile dropped from his face like a chunk of hot lead from a piece of lard.

“You what?” he yelled.

“Expected you,” I repeated with a smile.

The eyes were wide open now, bulging. I had jarred him all right.

The telephone rang; and with the sound, I was rigid with suspicion. That was too much of a coincidence. No one had business with me. No one was supposed to know where I was. Philip Conway was merely a man of mystery who had dropped into the Colisades Hotel and secured a room with bath.

The telephone was fastened to the wall. To answer it and talk into the mouthpiece I would have to turn my back to my visitor. That probably was part of the plan — to get this fat slob in the room and then have me turn my back for a minute or two. Not to answer the telephone would be to confess fear, to let him see that I was afraid, and I didn’t propose to give him that advantage.

Without seeming to do so consciously, I managed to angle toward the telephone so that I could keep a watch on my visitor. As I lifted the receiver I bowed and faced him.

“Excuse me,” I said to him, and to the telephone transmitter, “Hello!”

A woman’s voice answered, a voice which was shrill with terror, hysterical with fear.

“Ed, don’t…”

That was as far as she got. There was a scream, the sound of a blow, a jarring fall, and then a series of thudding sounds which could have been made by the receiver at the other end of the line as it dangled back and forth, knocking against the wall.

I did not so much as bat an eyelash. Still half turned toward my visitor, I carried on a one-sided conversation as though the call were part of a program which had already been blocked out.

“That’s quite all right,” I said. “He’s here now, but I’m glad you called. Thank you. Good-bye.”

I hung up the receiver and turned to my guest.

“Now just what was it you had in mind?” I asked.

His mouth was sagging open and his face was two shades whiter. Score one for me. It was plain that he was not privy to that telephone call. It had been coincidence after all. I had thought so when I heard the voice. There had only been two words, and they were shrieked in high-pitched terror, but the voice had been that of the woman with the mole on her left hand, the woman I knew as Maude Enders, and I had been warned against her by a man who had paid for the warning with his life.

She was a mystery, this girl with the mole. There was a master crook who was after me, who meant murder, and she was, beyond doubt, a member of his gang, and yet she had seemed to side with me. Once or twice she had evidently betrayed the interests of her master in order to take steps which she had fancied were necessary to save my life — and yet I had been warned against her by the Weasel, and the Weasel had been riddled with bullets from a curtained death-car while the words of warning were still warm on his lips.

“My name is Wallace, Walter Wallace,” my caller lied nervously, “but, perhaps if you are so familiar with me and my visit you know my errand?”

This last was a subtle dig, an attempt to call my bluff.

I yawned while he anxiously watched my face.

“I thought you might be able to tell me better than to have me piece together the information I already have — thought it might be better for you, that is; but since I know the general nature of your mission, I can save the time of both of us by giving you a direct and immediate answer. The answer is NO, absolutely NO!”

I snapped out that last and glared at him.

I could see beads of perspiration upon his fat forehead, and, just then, the telephone rang again.

This time I answered it with more confidence. The previous ring had shown that a telephone call was no part of the program of Walter Wallace, whatever other tricks he might have up his sleeve.

It was the bell captain.

“A special delivery letter, sir.”

“Send it up,” I answered, and hung up.

By the time I had the door unlocked and open, I could hear the bell boy coming down the corridor. I flipped him half a dollar, and looked at the envelope. It was addressed to “Mr. Philip Conway, Room 456, Colisades Hotel,” and it was in the handwriting of the girl with the mole.

Quickly I slit the envelope and read the message.

I thrust the note back into my pocket and returned to my guest.

“Look here, Jenkins,” he said with a forceful manner that was meant to be bluster, but barely hid the fear that was creeping into his eyes, “you can’t turn this thing down like that. It ain’t right… it ain’t… er… safe.”

I sneered openly.

“Nothing is unsafe for me, except that it would really be more dangerous to accept than to reject the proposition.”

I was talking in circles, seeking to keep within character, to let him believe that I knew all about him, all about his errand, and I was getting thoroughly sick of the whole business. Also I would have to get into action pretty sudden. If the gang I was fighting knew where I was located, — and the special delivery letter and telephone call was proof enough of that, — I would have to start getting under cover, and blamed quick. I had no time to waste bandying words with fat men.

He was on his feet now, trying to “sell” me on the idea.

“Listen, Jenkins, for God’s sake listen to reason. You know that I am only a messenger. There are other interests who are back of me, and who are invincible. You have elected to try and balk powerful men. In order to clear the name of Helen Chadwick’s father you have secured possession of valuable documents, documents which prove that old Chadwick was the one back of that paving graft, but, unless you surrender those documents to us and let us place the blame on the political party which should shoulder it, there will be great harm done.

“Now I’m handing it to you straight, Jenkins, you can’t leave this hotel alive unless you give me those documents. You might kill me, but you’d hang if you did. You’re playing in too big a game. Killing me wouldn’t save your own life, and I must have those documents by midnight. This is an ultimatum.”

So that was it. I pretended to reconsider, and while I bowed my head in silence I did some real thinking.

There were two parties who wanted that last paper that related to the paving graft. Two powerful parties. One was the crook, old Icy-Eyes, the man who was at the head of the newly organized crime trust. The other was a big politician. Also I wanted that last paper, wanted it bad. If the memory of old Chadwick were blackened it would kill Mrs. Chadwick, ruin Helen’s life, undo all the work I’d already done to keep Helen happy, to keep her mother from finding out.

Old Icy-Eyes had been too smooth to let the political crowd know he had the paper. He had claimed it was in my possession. That started the two opposite factions fighting with each other, tended to keep us both busy, and left him free to plan and execute his murder of me.

This fat fellow talked too smooth to be a plain crook. He was probably a lawyer, a “fixer” who was on the inside. All right, he’d threatened me with death, and he could take the consequences.

“All right,” I said at length, “perhaps I have been too hasty in this thing. Here” — I tossed him a ring of keys — “my car’s down in the hotel garage. The attendant will show it to you. Here is my key ring. Take my car, get out of here, and drive it into the alley back of Lip Sing’s at eleven o’clock tonight. Wait there for a minute, and you’ll have my final answer. I can’t promise anything, but the car I give as my security of good faith, and to show you that I’ll be there.”

That satisfied him. His green eyes sparkled and he held out a flabby hand.

“Fine!” he wheezed. “That’s the spirit. I knew I could count on you seeing the thing in the proper light. I’ll be there. Mind you, though, no funny business. I’ll have cops posted on every corner.”

I smiled and nodded, and took his hand with an effort.

If Icy-Eyes wanted to get me in trouble with the political powers that were, I’d show him a thing or two. That note from Maude Enders was a plant. In some way they had found out that I had confidence in her and had forced her to write the note. She had reached a telephone and called to warn me not to keep the appointment. There could be no other interpretation of the words “Ed, don’t…” She had never finished, because someone of her own gang had caught her at the telephone.

All right, Icy-Eyes had sicced the politicians on me. I’d slip this bird into my car, have him drive down the alley, and keep my appointment. We’d see if he’d make any more death threats against me.

“I’ll see you to the elevator,” I told him, and walked down the corridor, my hand on his shoulder in token of perfect understanding.

Somehow I sensed that this was the last round. Sinister forces were seeking my death, forces of power and position. There was something uncanny in the way this head of the crime trust, the man whose name I did not know, but whose outstanding characteristic was a pair of cold, icy eyes, had been able to put his finger on me at will. I was tagged from place to place by the head of this crime trust despite my best attempts at disguise; regardless of my precautions, he could send me visitors, special delivery letters… my back was to the wall. It would be a fight in which no quarter was asked or given.

The worst of it was that I couldn’t disappear entirely from the city because this Icy-Eyes had a document I must have. The last of a series of papers which connected Helen Chadwick’s father with the paving graft. The Chadwicks were a proud family. The head of that aristocratic family had been trapped into a grafting intrigue, had been blackmailed, and had been hounded to his grave. His widow still maintained the social prestige, his daughter was of the inner social circle, but a sword was hanging over their heads. Let this last letter get out and Chadwick’s name would be blackened, the family ruined, and the mother would die.

Helen Chadwick had befriended me. More, she had an effect upon my emotions which I dared not pause to analyze. Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, had no business having a love affair. To confess my feelings, to meet with success in my suit would ruin the happiness of the girl I lov… No, I would not say it, even to myself. Circumstances had impressed upon me that Helen cared for me, yet I would not let her. I would get the letter, destroy it, and then shut myself out of her life, vanish once more into the shadows of the underworld. But there was one thing I would do first. I must show Icy-Eyes that I was his master. And, before I did that, I would dispose of this Walter Wallace, this political henchman who smugly called upon me and threatened my life.

Such were the thoughts which raced through my mind as I walked to the elevator with the fat man who smiled his self-satisfied grin. One hand was on his shoulder, and the other was clenched at my side, ready to crash into his fat neck at the first signs of treachery.

And so we came to the elevator, and I pressed the button, the red light flashed, the door slid open, the fat politician stepped in, and the car whisked down the shaft, and then I glided into swift action.

My hiding place had been discovered, was known to both factions who sought my life. An instant’s delay might be a second too long.

I sprinted for the back stairs, felt my way silently down them, slipped past the lobby, into the basement, through the laundry where tired-eyed girls looked up wearily from their endless tasks, out into the delivery chute where a truck waited with parcels for outside delivery. I stood for a moment sizing up the situation, and then dove inside among the bundles of laundry, burrowing my way past the paper packages until I was fairly hidden.

The driver had been checking his lists in the office, and he came back to the chute an instant later. The light was shut off as the outer door slammed, the car swayed as the driver climbed into the seat, there was a lurch, and we were off.

I dared not stay long within the truck. There would probably be some early deliveries within the business district. I knew that the Colisades Hotel was part of a chain of hotels and that the laundry served some half dozen of the downtown hostelries. Whether it also served outside customers I had no means of knowing, and I could take no chance.

The doors were latched, and it took all the pressure of my shoulder to spring them, and then I nearly catapulted over the rear of the truck as they came open; but I caught my balance, turned, grinned at the smiling occupants of the car behind, as though it was all a huge joke, slipped to the street, and, helped by the momentum from the truck, angled to the curb on a swift trot, ducked across the sidewalk, got my bearings and began my counter offensive.

It was now or never. Either old Icy-Eyes was going to take the count this time or I was, one or the other. I was sick of the whole business. All I wanted was to be left alone, given a chance to live my own life, and I wanted Helen Chadwick left alone.

The place I was headed for was three blocks away, and I took blamed good care that I wasn’t shadowed on those three blocks. It took me half an hour to get there, but I was sure of myself.

It was in a little, blind office in the back of one of the older buildings that are rapidly coming out to make way for skyscrapers. Twenty years ago and the building was a source of civic pride. Today it’s an eyesore. There were wide staircases, gloomy halls, a small, wheezing elevator, great offices that rambled over the building, insufficiently lighted, covered with dust and grime. Here the cheaper tenants who desired downtown addresses, yet couldn’t afford large rents, held the offices on month-to-month leases, waiting until such time as the owners could finance a skyscraper, when they would have to move to some other, similar building.

There was a Japanese photographer, a small job-printing concern, a “school for secretaries,” and a suite of offices which had absolutely nothing on the doors. Not by the slightest vestige of a sign was any inkling given as to the identity of the business which was housed back of those blank doorways.

I picked the center door, knocked three times, then paused, knocked once, another pause, and then twice.

From within there was a peculiar shuffling sound, and soon there came the rasp of a key in the lock, the shooting of a bolt, and a skull cap thrust itself around the corner of the jamb. Beneath the black skull cap were two piercing eyes and a drooping mustache tacked on to a sallow, wrinkled skin.

“Ach! It is the Herr Jenkins. Come in at once, Herr Jenkins.”

I entered, and the German locked and bolted the door, and stood waiting. After his salutation there was not so much as a word of greeting, none of the handshaking palaver which the modem shopkeeper salves a sale over with. This bird was the best workman in the country, and he relied on his ability to get and hold trade.

“Bachmar,” I told him, “I want a crown, and I want it of genuine, heavy plate. I want it literally encrusted with gems, and I want enough color designs in the stones so that the general effect will be dazzling. Then I want some of the stock stuff, fake diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and the rest, but I want ’em stuck in great, plush-lined cases of the most exquisite workmanship. That crown must be in a dark-stained mahogany box without any plush lining whatever, and I want the box made so tight the crown will just fit in it.”

His hawklike eyes peered intently at me from beneath the black border of the skull cap.

“And you want him how soon?”

I grinned.

“Here’s where I shock you. I want ’em by tomorrow night.”

He shook his head.

“Come on, Bachmar,” I urged. “I know you can make ’em by tomorrow night. You’ve got all the stuff here, and it’s just a question of throwing ’em together.”

His face became fairly livid.

“Ach, you and your throw them together. Me, I can make them by tomorrow, yes, but what will they be? Herr Bachmar has never made a shoddy thing in his life, and here you come and offer to pay me double to throw away my pride in my work. Such are the times. An honest workman is insulted right and left by men who turn out anything to get the money. Bah! These men who work by the clock and for money and who have no pride in what they do! I could spit them in the face by the ten thousand.

“You, Herr Jenkins, you get your things by Friday afternoon or you get them not. Which is it to be? I am a busy man. Speak.”

I mollified the old man as best I could, agreed that he was to make delivery on Friday, and then began to give him more details as to what I wanted. At that his eyes sparkled and beamed, and a smile crinkled over the parchment skin.

“Ach, yes,” he said. “I know what you want. The treatment is to be Russian, yes? And you will want the workmanship of the crown to be similar to that famous crown which is reported to have been offered for sale in this country… Ach, I waste time with talk. Come with me and I show you a picture once — where is that pencil?”

Fifteen minutes later and I was headed down the back stairs of the ramshackle building. Wherever else I might be followed I could not be followed into that building. Nor had I said anything to Bachmar about keeping my visit confidential. That was not necessary. He was one of the old school, a workman who loved his work, took pride in his performance, and made his prices not on the basis of what he could get, but on what he figured was a fair value.

My next bet was to hole up and stay there, and I covered it to the best of my ability. The hotel I selected was one of the best, and the secondhand baggage I sent up had been purchased in a pawnshop, filled with a miscellaneous assortment of junk, and if there was anything to distinguish me to the average spectator, the clerk or the house detective as being other than a casual tourist, I couldn’t detect it, and I’m willing to bet that when I can’t, they can’t.

My room was in the rear of the corridor, near the freight elevator and the back stairs, and there was a fire escape two doors away. I had picked up some magazines and was all ready to settle down in comfort, eat, sleep and read.

And I soaked up rest like a blotter soaks up ink. I knew I was going to have need for all the rest I could cram into my system because there’d be a while when there wouldn’t be any such thing as sleep.

The morning papers were full of it, and I chuckled to myself. Walter Wallace had been his right name after all, and he had driven my car down into the alley back of Lip Sing’s. He kept my appointment, drove my car, and got what had been laid out for me. There was this difference: he had been suspicious, and he hadn’t been a lone crook with the hands of society turned against him. He had been a political henchman of the inside powers, and he could crook his fingers and have men rush to do his bidding. He’d threatened to have a cop on every corner, and he’d done that and more.

When he brought my car to a stop in the alley back of Lip Sing’s he collected enough lead to make a cork sink in molasses. He’d never known what had struck him, but had slumped against the wheel, riddled with bullets. Evidently old Icy-Eyes wasn’t taking any great chances with Ed Jenkins. I was to keep the appointment and be shot down before I had so much as a chance to unwind from behind the steering wheel.

The murderers had their car all parked, ready for the getaway, and after the shooting, while everything was confusion, they piled into their machine and dashed through the alley, out into the street, and into the arms of a squad of cops who had been posted near the alley and, attracted by the shots, where organized for just such a capture.

The names of the gunmen in that car read like a list of Who’s Who in the Underworld, and when they found that a reception committee was waiting for them they nearly fell off of the Christmas tree. One of ’em made the mistake of trying to shoot it out, and he was a good shot. The cop he’d got had been popular.

They’d pulled their alibi before they knew what it was all about — that Ed Jenkins, notorious crook, had opened fire on them without provocation, and that they’d returned the fire and sought to make their escape. Each and all of them swore they recognized me and that I had fired the first shots. When they led ’em back to the scene of the crime and showed ’em Walter Wallace pumped full of lead… oh, it was a great piece of reading, all right.

I lay in bed with my pot of coffee and my newspaper and chuckled until I slopped the coffee over the edge of the cup. I could imagine Icy-Eyes when he read that paper. They’d captured his strong-arm squad, and it was a hundred to one shot that at least one of those guns would squeal, blow the works. How much they knew was hard to tell. Certainly Icy-Eyes didn’t let any cheap thug have direct contact with him, but they unquestionably knew his lieutenants, and if they squealed on the lieutenants and the lieutenants should take a notion to get immunity by joining in the chorus… oh, Icy-Eyes was having a bad breakfast all right.

Lazily I read through the paper because there was nothing else to do, and then, in the society columns, I caught an announcement in prominent, black headlines:

Mrs. Kemper wasn’t the type to go in for any great amount of advertising in the society columns. She didn’t need to. That dame was of the inner circle of the inner circle, the upper crust of the top story.

I read on, through the maudlin gush, until there was a list of the guests, and noticed that Edward Gordon Jenkins would be among those present.

Here was a fortunate coincidence. The Kempers were necessary in the plans I had formulated, and I was expecting to get in touch with them soon. Now this meant that Helen wished to see me. Undoubtedly she was feeling the pressure of the net closing around her. She needed me, and this was Mrs. Kemper’s clever way of letting me know.

I went to the telephone and rang her up.

“Understand I’m to be a guest at your party,” I told her.

She was bubbling with enthusiasm, although I could tell that there was someone within hearing at her end of the wire by the care with which she chose her words.

“You are to be the guest of honor. The party is really being given for you.”

“I gathered as much from the newspaper,” I told her. “Now, listen. Put out another notice that the real guest of honor is a Mr. Alexandrovitch, who is to spend a day or two at the house and who has an important business matter pending with your husband.”

“That will be entirely satisfactory,” she cooed, using commonplace words, as though she were merely conversing with a friend about the weather or the length of the skirts. “But be sure and keep the engagement. There is much to discuss.”

I knew that, and if she had known what I knew she would have been just that much more anxious; but there was no use spreading a general alarm so I thanked her with my best social grace and hung up.

Good girl that. She didn’t waste a lot of time asking me where I was, where she could reach me if she needed me and all that rot. I was a lone wolf and she knew it. She had enough confidence in me to figure I’d be on the job. And she was one of those wise, matchmaking women. Hang it! She couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t marry Helen and settle down. If Helen wanted me and I wanted Helen that was all there was to it in the eyes of that dame. I knew the world better than that, knew that if I should ever speak, should ever allow myself to slip, there would be a lifetime of misery ahead of Helen Chadwick. Not that I was conceited or thought that the girl was crazy about me; but there had been a time when we had been forced to pretend we were engaged, and from that time on I knew that the girl looked on me differently from the rest of the society namby-pambies who buzzed around her.

However, there was work to be done, and I couldn’t allow myself to waste time building air castles. I had had many experiences with desperate crooks, but this was the first time I had ever run into an organization that was so baffling, so powerful. I had my back to the wall, fighting for life and for the happiness of the one woman I cared greatly for.

I sent out for a kit of tools and fitted up a little workshop in my room in the hotel. Also I had myself measured for dress clothes, called for the crown and the phoney jewelry and was all set.

In the meantime there had been quite a splurge in the papers concerning the mysterious Alexis Alexandrovitch. The reporters had found Mrs. Kemper to be quite mysterious, and she particularly took pains to assure the reporters that Mr. Alexandrovitch desired to remain quite incognito. His business was with her husband, but she did not know the details of that business nor would she divulge them if she did; it merely happened that he was to be present over the weekend and she had determined to entertain him at the informal gathering, etc., etc., etc.

That woman had a knack of handing out the blah-blah which made the reporters gush all over the society columns of the paper. Of course anything the Kempers did was duck soup for the social columns anyway. They were the leaders, and the smaller fry followed and imitated.

The stage was all set, everything ready for the ringing up of the curtain. I had completed my little work with the tools, and folded my tents like the Arabs and silently slipped out of the back door, leaving sufficient money on the dresser to pay my bill, so there wouldn’t be a howl.

I went a hundred miles out of town by machine, and when I came back, I came in style, none other than Mr. Alexis Alexandrovitch, himself. The telegrams I had sent Mrs. Kemper had insured a respectable sprinkling of reporters who met the train.

It was working fine. Loring Kemper was a noted jewel collector. It was well known that he had the means to purchase almost any collection of gems, and the fact that Mrs. Kemper had emphasized that the Russian gentleman who insisted on remaining incognito under the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch had business with her husband was all that one could ask for in the line of advertising. She might as well have stated that I would have the Russian crown jewels with me and be negotiating for a sale with the well-known collector.

This was the game I had determined upon to bring the battle into my own hands, and if that bait didn’t attract the gang of Icy-Eyes, then I didn’t know what would.

I was disguised, of course, and it was a good disguise. I had taken more time with that disguise than I had taken with any other part I had ever assumed. There was either an uncanny ability on the part of that gang to penetrate disguises, or there had been a leak somewhere.

There were special police at the station, and there was Loring Kemper. I saw him at once and tipped him the high sign, and he came over to me with just the right shade of respectful deference in his voice.

“Ah, you are… er… Mr. Alexandrovitch? This is indeed a pleasure!”

His right hand clasped mine cordially, and his shrewd eyes twinkled into mine.

“You have the—?” he asked, lowering his eyes significantly to the strapped, locked bag which I held determinedly in my left hand, and which I allowed no porter to touch.

I glanced guardedly about and then nodded.

In such a manner did we leave the crowded station, and that evening photographs of my arrival were published in the papers, and each and every photograph showed me holding that double-locked bag firmly in my left hand.

The trap was baited. It remained to be seen what would come to it.

During the drive to the Kemper mansion, Loring Kemper said but little. He was a man of strong silences, and one could almost feel his emotions from the very quality of his silence. Now he was honestly glad to see me, and there was a perpetual twinkle in his eyes as he swung the steering wheel of the big car.

The magnificent residence seemed almost homelike to me as we rolled up the graveled driveway and came to a stop before the side door. Servants were there, waiting for my bags, a chauffeur took the car to the garage, and, arm in arm, Loring Kemper and myself came upon Helen Chadwick and Mrs. Kemper.

I have forgotten the casual remark with which Mrs. Kemper prefaced our greeting. She was too shrewd a diplomat, too much a woman of the world, to have jarred the occasion by saying anything which would have demanded my entire attention by way of reply. Her welcome was cordial and sincere, the mere fact that I was there was proof enough of that. But she greeted me casually enough, swung just enough so that her arm engaged that of her husband, and Helen gravitated to me as the older people strolled off down the corridor without so much as a backward glance, taking it for granted that we were following.

Nor was Helen Chadwick one to display her feelings. She was a little thoroughbred, the type who smile bravely into the inscrutable depths of fate, meet Dame Fortune halfway and play the game of life with steady eyes and calm poise.

“Well, Ed, back again.”

The words were accompanied by a frank grin of perfect camaraderie. Despite her flapper dress, which displayed the charm of her perfect form, there was an entire lack of that stilted sex consciousness, that biological hypocrisy which tends to accentuate rather than conceal. She might have been just a good pal greeting a chum of her own sex.

“How’s tricks?” I asked, almost casually, meeting her mood.

She shrugged her shoulder and turned twinkling eyes toward me.

“The plot thickens. I understand from Mrs. Kemper that things are getting pretty hot. There’s one letter left and I guess that’s going to be pretty hard to get, isn’t it, Ed?”

And then I made a statement to cure which I could have cheerfully bitten off my tongue. Her casual, offhand manner had put me too much at my ease, and when she directed my thoughts to the gang of criminals who were drawing their net tighter and tighter in an effort to ruin her and to sweep me into their power, I unconsciously thought out loud.

“They’re after us,” I said. “It’s life or death, and our backs are to the wall, Helen. They’re strong and clever, diabolically clever, and we can’t tell just when they’ll strike.”

She whirled and the mask of mirth dropped from her eyes, and I saw her regarding me with concern.

“Are you in danger, Ed — that is, physical danger?”

I laughed lightly.

“I am always in danger if I let other people have their way. In this instance, as in the others, I don’t propose to let ’em.”

That was all. We had reached the spacious library and Mrs. Kemper motioned for me to be seated.

“Sprawl out, Ed, and have a cigarette with us,” she said, and then gave a worried glance at Helen.

Boob that I was, I had let her realize that more than the paper was at stake; that the game was life and death, and that it was coming to a showdown one way or the other.

There was a cough at my elbow, and I turned to see the impassive face of Riggs, the butler. His bearing was as stiff and proper as one could ask for, but there was a twinkle in his eye which showed me that the trusted servant was in on the secret, knew that Alexis Alexandrovitch, the man with the military bearing, the formfitting suit and the Van Dyke, was none other than Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. Riggs and I had become quite well acquainted on my former visit, and I sprang up and gave him my hand. He was a splendid fellow, and I liked him. Servant or no servant, he was a regular man, and Ed Jenkins was certainly not a man to be snobbish.

Mrs. Kemper beamed her approval.

“Yes, Ed, we told him. We thought it would make it easier for you if you could let the bars down before Riggs. By the way, Riggs has a father coming from the East, a father whom he hasn’t seen for three years. You’ll want to be starting for the train soon, Riggs? Instruct the chauffeur to run you down in the blue car.”

Riggs smiled and bowed his thanks, one of the family, yet always in his proper place.

“He just got the telegram this morning,” said Mrs. Kemper. “I guess the old boy wanted to stage a little surprise.”

Riggs withdrew, grinning, and the conversation ran into small talk. A casual observer would hardly have thought that of that small party two of us were in the last trench, fighting a gang of organized criminals, while the other two had taken us in, knowing that by so doing they were inviting anything from notoriety to death.

So for an hour we talked of trivial things, cementing our friendship by the undercurrent of mutual understanding and confidence which flowed among us. And I liked it. I, Ed Jenkins, the creature of the shadows, the dweller of the underworld, sat there in the presence of three of the cleanest thoroughbreds that society could produce, reclining in a massive chair, amidst sumptuous furnishings, and watching the curl of cigarette smoke as it wound up toward the ceiling, outlined sharply against the formal, booklined walls.

Of a sudden Mrs. Kemper turned the conversation to the channels which had probably been in all of our minds.

“Ed, we can see that you’re setting a trap. You’re baiting it with — with yourself. Tomorrow night is a reception at which there will be a throng. I suppose the attempt will be made at that time. Do you suppose there is any danger before then?”

I squinted at the curling smoke and answered lazily, as though I were completely relaxed, enjoying every moment and without great thought of the morrow.

“Oh, I think not. That’ll be the logical time for a crook to try and either get what he is after or take the chance to slip in the house and hide.”

She nodded, and I glanced sideways at Helen, wondering whether I had managed to deceive her by my casual manner. As a matter of cold fact I felt that the attempt would be made before tomorrow. Time was short, and if I knew the gang with whom I was dealing, they would manage to strike at an unexpected time, at a moment when great precautions would not be taken. To their mind I was Alexis Alexandrovitch, a Russian with immensely valuable gems in my possession. At any moment I might reach a bargain with Loring Kemper, and then the gems would become part of the Kemper collection, stored in his safe, under his protection. Until then I would probably want to retain the physical possession of the gems. It was true that I had set the trap, and baited it with myself, but little did they dream of how I intended to spring that trap. Crook that I was, I was still too much of a gentleman to bring my fights into that home, even when I was, in a measure, making war on their behalf.

My inspection of Helen’s face told me nothing except that she had read more from my glance than from my words. What goes on back of the doll faces of these flappers is more than mortal man can read, anyway. I had seen her in action before, had seen her match her wits with a skillful crook, a ruthless criminal who had her in his power, and she had seemed more intent upon getting her mouth on straight with her pink-tipped little finger, as she gazed into the mirror of her vanity box, than in what was being said by this crook, and yet his words were bringing the structure of her very existence down about her ears like a house of cards.

The telephone shrilled, and there was a something jarring, almost hysterical, in the ringing of that bell. It was as though jangling discord had interrupted the harmonious flow of perfect understanding between us.

Loring Kemper himself answered it, drawling out a deep-throated “hello” into the transmitter, the receiver held lightly between the powerful fingers of his left hand.

And then, suddenly, I saw his fingers tighten, tighten until the skin showed white over the knuckles.

“Nothing can be done for him?” he asked, then waited a minute, and nodded.

“He was to have had his father with him… was to have met him at the train… all right… Tell him to come right out here. He’s uninjured, you say? Very well. Have him come out here, and get the best medical attention for the chauffeur. I’ll have my own doctor there inside of half an hour.”

Mrs. Kemper had arisen with wide eyes. Helen was watching her with a puzzled expression. I could feel my own eyes narrowing in spite of myself, could feel my lips tighten, and I strove to keep my face expressionless so that I could assume just the proper degree of sympathetic surprise when Loring Kemper should turn and tell us the news. It would never do for me to let them glimpse the savagery of my soul at the time. Had they caught upon my face a hint of the emotions which were seething within me at that time they would have known.

Unwittingly I had sent a good man to his death.

In baiting the trap with myself I had discounted the danger. I was always in danger. Daily, almost hourly, I faced death, danger from a hundred sources, and I had grown accustomed to it, had learned to take care of myself. As trap bait I took my gamble with my eyes open, and the resourcefulness I had developed from years of experience had quickened my perceptions, given me self-reliance and confidence…

Kemper turned from the telephone.

“It’s Riggs. A truck got out of control at the station, backed up on the sidewalk and crushed him against the side of the building. The chauffeur was also injured. What makes it particularly tragic was that Riggs’ father had just got off the train, and was in time to see the whole accident, although Riggs had no chance for even a word with his father before he died — killed instantly.”

Mrs. Kemper’s face went white. Her tongue licked her lips, and her eyes showed the anguish she did not betray in words.

“Such a shame! You’ll have the father come here, of course.”

He nodded.

“So I’ve instructed them at the emergency hospital,” he said, and then turned again to the telephone to set in motion the machinery which would rush the best of surgeons and nurses to the bedside of his chauffeur.

I kept my eyes upon the cigarette smoke. Over that little gathering had swept the hush of death, and I was forced to look down the end of my glowing cigarette and pretend that my emotions were merely those of keen sympathy at the tragedy. In reality I was anxious to get away, to start the action.

I sensed that sunup tomorrow morning would either find me dead or victorious, and I did not propose to let any grass grow upon my trail, now that I had been given a definite clue. My quarry was already within the trap, was nibbling at the bait itself.

Riggs’ father seemed pathetic in his hopelessness. He had journeyed half across the continent to see his son, and death had snatched that son away from him at the very moment of meeting. He was a wisp of a man with watery gray eyes, and a certain helplessness of carriage, motion and thought. He seemed dazed, bewildered, preoccupied in his sorrow, yet seemingly unable to realize that the Kempers were only helping him to get himself accustomed to the situation. One would have thought that, by some subtle process of the aged mind, he had adopted the Kempers as his children to take the place of the one he had lost.

Mr. Kemper was tact and sympathy itself, and made the arrangements personally for the funeral and burial. Also he made a swift investigation of the circumstances, and I fancied there was something of cold-blooded revenge in the calm manner in which he went about his investigation.

The investigation was startlingly simple. It stopped almost where it began. The truck had, through some mechanical fault which could not have been anticipated, locked itself in reverse and the driver had really been blameless — according to the reports which were submitted by telephone to Mr. Kemper, through the attorneys who had placed investigators on the case.

It was rather a hectic evening, what with the necessity of soothing the elder Riggs, making arrangements for the funeral, and having the accident investigated. We turned in about eleven-thirty, and, before we retired, Loring Kemper took me for a stroll through the grounds.

I noticed that there were two watchmen on duty, patrolling the grounds, keeping an eye on the house. They had their orders, and they knew everyone within the house. A stranger was to be shot on sight unless he halted at once at their hail.

To blind him, I nodded my approval, and congratulated him on his foresight and preparation — Bah! It is ever human nature to overlook the obvious!

I rolled into bed and turned out my light, and then I rolled out on the other side, having arranged the pillows beneath the covers so that they showed a general outline of a sleeper. The double-locked bag was fastened to the bed by a thin, steel chain, a chain which caught the reflected light which came through the window, and glittered and shimmered.

I hid within a closet from which, through a small crack in the opening of the door, I could see the general lay of the land, and keep the bed under observation.

An hour passed and the house settled down into a deep quiet. Strain my ears as I would, I could not hear a sound. From within the room there came a faint glitter where the chain caught the reflection of a distant street light. It was a well-made house with hardwood floors, and one would hardly expect a creaky board, yet there was something tangible about the silence of that house. It was the silence of a grave, a deep, absolute silence.

And so I crouched, muscles strained, waiting, watching and listening — always listening.

And then, suddenly, I noticed that I could no longer detect the glitter of the chain. Could the light have been extinguished? No. It was still there. I could see the gleam of it through the window, yet the chain had ceased to glitter and there had not been a sound.

At that instant there came one sound, and only one, — a deep “clink,” then silence. However, I knew now what was happening. That sound had been made when a pair of heavy nippers had cut their way through the slender steel chain.

Again there was utter, absolute silence. The trap was ready to be sprung. The prey was inside, and it only remained to plan out the rest of the campaign — yet I could see nothing, could hear no sound.

Then a shadow came between me and the window, a dark something which blotted out the light, a human being moving noiselessly through the gloom of the room. I watched, breathless, tense, muscles ready. There was hardly the faintest motion from that blot. As smoothly, gradually, and imperceptibly as the disc of moon rises above the gold-rimmed hills in the east, the shadow was stealing across the lighted square of that window; and then I knew why I had heard no sound. The intruder was one of those men whose muscles are so well trained, so smooth and flexible, that he can move with infinite slowness. There was no sudden jerk of motion, no faint scratch or shuffle as a muffled shoe slid over the floor, no faint sound of garments brushing against a chair. The reason there were none of these sounds was because the man was moving an inch at a time, slowly, cautiously, and absolutely noiselessly.

It would be difficult to follow such a man. Trained as I was in the art of stealing about in the night shadows, I could hardly expect to trail such a thief and not betray myself in some way. However, I, too, was a master of stealth, and, matching my caution with his own, I stole forth from the closet an inch at a time.

So we went from the room, down the corridor, and stairs, two grim shadows, engaged in a duel of life and death, pursuer and pursued, and both moving at a snail’s pace through the surrounding darkness.

I could not be sure that the man was ahead, that he had not stepped to one side and allowed me to go past, nor could I be sure that I would not stumble upon him, that my gait was not too fast and would run me up on him in the dark. All I had to guide me was the pace he had taken when I saw him slip past the window, and I knew the route he must follow to the lower floor. After that I would have to trust to luck to give me a lead, or else rely entirely upon my knowledge of crookery. I dared not be too slow. Disastrous as it might be, I must be too swift rather than too slow. To let this man get away in the dark would be equivalent to losing my life and the happiness of Helen Chadwick.

And then there came a break in my favor.

It was no longer a noiseless darkness. The slipping, sliding sounds of stockinged feet on the floor could be heard as the man made for the kitchen. Evidently he was now sacrificing everything to speed, and I followed in the same manner, seeking to keep pace with him.

At the kitchen window he turned and played a flashlight in one swift circle about the room, but I had been prepared for that move and was crouched back of the table which stood near the stove.

He paused on the window sill and then dropped out into the night, and I gave him a second or two before I followed. I did not wish to attract the attention of the guards, and I could not risk detection by the man who had taken that bag through the window, but I dared not delay. Those gems were going straight to old Icy-Eyes, himself. The quarry that had taken my bait was carrying it to the lair, and I must not lose that trail. With the theft of those gems I felt I had taken a long step toward insuring the safety of Helen Chadwick, and that was all I cared for. My own life was of no value, save and except as my existence offered some protection to her.

I went over the sill doubled up, cautious, and I dropped to the ground easily. I could see neither of the watchmen, but I could hear the footsteps of one of them as he approached through the darkness, walking with that measured, marching tread which showed that he suspected nothing.

He was approaching, and that indicated that he had been even farther away when the man with the bag had jumped from the window. There were two watchmen, one to each side of the house, and they were, of course, not adequate protection. In grounds such as those it would have taken two dozen men to form any sort of a patrol; but those watchmen could and did become damnable nuisances. To run into one of them now would be a fatal mistake. Now that the gems were out of the house, I must follow.

What had my man done? Was he crouched in the shadows waiting for the watchman to pass? In that event he would see me as I slipped through the grounds if I should sprint on before the watchman came nearer.

Or had the thief slipped right along through the shadows, taking advantage of the auspicious moment which had found the watchman at the other end of the yard? In that event I dared not wait longer.

In the game I was playing I could take almost any chances other than the chance of losing the man I was following. If I should overtake him I could capture him in my character of Russian Grand Duke who was following his priceless gems, and the man would never be the wiser. If he should get away from me, however, I would have taken desperate chances without being absolutely assured that my scheme had worked, that the trap had sprung upon the prey I sought. I would know when the trap sprung all right, but I wanted to be morally certain of the prey I had caught.

So I prayed a short prayer that I was acting on the right hunch and slipped away in the dark shadows of the yard, finding, as I had suspected all along, that it was absolutely no trick to elude the watchman.

Then I got a jolt. I made my way toward the garage, thinking that I would find the man with the bag preparing to take one of the cars, perhaps merely to borrow it, perhaps stealing it. The cars were all there, all in order, and I could find no trace of anyone in the garage.

Had I misjudged the man? Had he been ultra cautious and waited in the shadows there at the house? If so, beyond a doubt he had seen me follow what I supposed his trail had been, and there would be no chance that he was going to make it easier for me to capture him by coming to the garage — taking the very direction in which I had sprinted.

That left but one bet, and that was the paved road at the foot of the hill to the left. I swung out of the garage and skipped lightly through the shadows of the hedge, working my way over toward that paved road.

It was when I was halfway there that fortune once more played into my hands. There was a peculiar gleam ahead — darkness — the gleam again, then darkness, and then a small circle of light thrown down on the ground.

I slowed and began to stalk that circle of light. Under the circumstances, considering the stage of the game, and the stakes for which I was playing, I could afford to overlook no bets, and I had to find out what was in that light circle.

As silently as a moving shadow, I slipped along the deep grass, and then, suddenly heaved a great sigh of relief. It was the thief, and as might be expected, he was taking the first, apparently safe opportunity to make certain that he really had what he wanted. It would hardly do to bring to Icy-Eyes a substituted bag stuffed with paper and loaded with brick for weight.

The plush cases with the separate gems he hurriedly passed over, apparently anxious to examine the contents of the massive box in which I had placed the crown.

Prying back the cover with a small jimmy, he directed the beam from the flashlight inside, and then gasped. Well he might. I had worked out the color combinations of that crown with an eye to beauty, and with the idea of dazzling the eye so that an accurate appraisement would be nearly impossible. Now, in the reflected light which came from the brilliant beam of that flashlight, the whole interior of the box seemed to be one brilliant fire of dancing lights, of scintillating splendor. No wonder he sucked in his breath in a gasp of pure admiration, of sheer delight.

After a moment’s examination he bent to consider the workmanship of the box and crown more carefully. Here I could watch him, and must. I sneaked even closer, saw the prying fingers go down and examine the unusual manner in which the box had been constructed, the foreign touch to the workmanship, the crown which was set into the box with screwed clamps which must require a small wrench to unfasten them so that the crown could be taken out, and which, in the meantime, held the glittering bauble rigidly in place, preventing it from shifting about in the box.

These things he examined, then shut the lid of the box, picked up the cases which were on the grass, and tumbled them all back into the bag which he had slit open with a knife.

That done, he went through the hedge and gave a low whistle. Almost immediately there was the purr of a motor. A long, racing car which had been concealed within the shadows of some trees came quietly throbbing to the curb opposite the hedge, and the man with the bag scuttled across the sidewalk.

In that instant when he was getting in the machine and stowing the bag between his legs, while the attention of the two was distracted, the thief s upon the bag, the driver’s upon his gears, I sprinted for the rear of the car.

But they didn’t see me. I was like a fast flying shadow as I dashed on noiseless feet across the sidewalk, and by the time they raised their heads for an inspection of the hedge and street, I was hidden from their sight. Luck certainly had been with me so far, and I considered it as an omen. Not only had things worked out as I had hoped, but there was one of those folding luggage carriers on the rear bumper.

I did not have to cling desperately to a spare tire as I had expected would be the case, but was able to sit in comfort upon the flat surface of the trunk rack, taking my ease, chuckling at the antics that machine went through in order to make sure it was not being followed.

It was in one of the older residential districts where the houses sat well back from the street with plenty of elbow room, where the new type of construction had not penetrated, that the machine slowed down, swerved into the curb, and the man with the bag jumped from the seat and dashed up a walk.

With hardly so much as a pause in its progress, the car gathered speed and swept on. I left it at the next corner. My business was with the man with the bag, and while the car might come back, I could take no chances. It had to slow enough for the turn to enable me to jump clear without taking a spill, and that was my only move.

I worked through dark yards and regarded the back of the house into which the man with the bag had gone. There seemed to be no watchers in the yard. The whole place was just as a thousand other similar houses — to all outward appearance, anyway.

It was a small insulator on the side of the house that gave me my first clue. It had no business being there, for one thing, and it caught the light from a street corner and reflected it in my eyes, for another. It was not for a telephone wire, nor for electric light service.

I stopped, studied it for a moment, and then went over the side of the house with my eyes, covering every bit of surface. Down near the ground I saw another dot which looked suspiciously like another insulator. Despite the risk, I took my electric flash and turned the beam on the side of the house, and then followed its path as I directed it over the ground.

Running down the end of the house were two small wires, and these wires formed a veritable network of tightly strung wire, over such windows as I could see. So fine was this wire and so dark was the night that it would have been almost invisible unless one were looking for it with care.

The first wire was within two feet of where I was standing. Probably another step and I would have given an alarm to those within the house.

Carefully I retraced my steps, searching for some means by which I could get into the house, knowing that time was precious and that at any moment I might be too late to accomplish that which I sought. It was just as I had almost made up my mind to try the front of the house that I found a short length of bare wire, dangling from a clothes post. It was the work of a moment to trace the leads of fine wire to a convenient window and short-circuit the network that guarded it.

An instant later I was slipping through that window, and, in the meantime, I had removed my Van Dyke. I would be my own self without disguise for this last chapter of the affair. The house had been easy after the electrical device had been negotiated. Apparently the head of the crime trust was either short of men, or placed his faith in mechanical efficiency more than in human ingenuity.

Once within the house I sought for a place where I could remain for a few minutes while I could hear what was going on. I had arranged a slight diversion for old Icy-Eyes, and when that took place I wanted to be where I could get a chance at his safe. Unless I was greatly mistaken, the paper I wanted was within that house, and all I wanted was a fair break.

While I listened, getting ready to act when the time came, and seeking to learn what was going on within the house, I heard a faint cry, a stifled gasp that was like the suppressed scream of a woman. Instantly there was the sound of a scuffle, and the hoarse curse of a man, a man who was crying with pain. All this was not on the program — not on the program I had arranged.

It called for action, and I slipped my automatic into my hand and skipped down the dark corridor. A door was open on my right, and I slipped into that open door, wondering if the room was occupied, seeking to learn the source of the sounds I had heard.

Apparently there was no one within the room, and it was dark, but, from a little closet at one end, I could see an indirect gleam of light. I tiptoed over to that closet, and then stopped, startled.

A former alcove at the end of the room had been made into a closet, and in this closet had been erected a platform with a flight of steep steps leading up to it. The platform was about seven or eight feet above the floor, and it was from over the top of this platform that the light was coming.

Now I could hear the sound of rapid breathing, the rustle of swift motions, the short panting of breath which spoke of bodies moving in a struggle of some sort, a silent, deadly struggle.

I was alone in a house filled with murderers, thugs, the scum of the underworld. The ruler of this gang desired my life with an intentness of purpose which probably overshadowed every other aim in life right then, and I was being forced to take desperate chances, but there seemed no other alternative. So far the breaks had been with me, and I am a great hand, whether in cards or in life, to press to the limit when fortune is smiling.

As nimbly as a monkey I scampered up those stairs, ready to encounter almost anything, yet not prepared for what I found.

The platform was flush against the wall, and there was a grille effect of ornamentation which apparently constituted the wall of the adjoining room. It was through this grille that the light was streaming and that the sounds were coming. A chair was at one end of the little platform, a chair fitted with a cushion, and against the chair stood a sawed-off shotgun. Apparently here was a little sentry box, a watch tower by which a guard could watch and wait, concealed from the room beyond by the ornamental grille, yet able to command its every corner with the deadly weapon which rested by the chair.

Something had happened to call this watchman from his post, a something which was evidently very unexpected in its nature, an emergency which had not been contemplated, and the answer to which evidently lay in the sounds of a struggle which was taking place within the other room. Now that I saw the platform and the secret watch tower I could see it all. Icy-Eyes was not underestimating me. Once before he had found that when he pressed me I would turn and attack. He had determined he would not be caught napping again. This watch tower had been prepared for my especial benefit and a man was kept constantly in charge. Should I enter that other room, and think, by any chance, that I had cornered old Icy-Eyes, he would have his hidden guard ready to shoot when he gave the signal.

I thought of all this in the fraction of a second it took me to get my eyes to the openings of the grille. That first glimpse showed that my surmise had been correct. The room which stretched out below me was evidently a den, an office, the headquarters of Icy-Eyes himself. Within it was a great desk, a massive safe, several chairs, a couch, and a couple of filing cases. Icy-Eyes was evidently doing business upon a big scale.

However, I had time for only an incidental glance at the furnishings of the room below. It was the swirling mass of struggling figures which interested me. There were several men and a girl engaged in a desperate, silent conflict, and, even as I looked, the conflict ended.

One of the men was evidently fighting on the side of the girl, and two men were opposed to them. The clothes had been almost entirely tom from the girl, her body was bruised and bleeding, and there was sheer, stark terror in her eyes. The man who had been with her was battered almost beyond semblance of a human being. At the last he had been struck repeatedly in the face with the butt of a pistol, and his features were a mass of blood, yet he was conscious.

Old Icy-Eyes himself was there and had actually been engaged in the struggle. In fact, from the looks of his face I would have ventured a guess that the girl had grabbed him and scratched his flabby skin, for there were several parallel scratches upon his face from which blood was streaming and he was flushed and panting, yet his eyes were as ice-cold as ever. In fact he seemed to radiate a cold, frosty light from those eyes, and their expression was not pleasant to see.

As the girl was flung on the couch and gagged, her hands lashed behind her back, I was able to get a glimpse of her features. She was the girl I had known as Maude Enders, the girl with the mole on her left hand.

Apparently that struggle had been swift, fierce, and unexpected. The man who was on guard in the watch tower had had no opportunity to use his shotgun. The struggle had swirled about Icy-Eyes himself, and it had been necessary for the watchman to enter the room and take a hand. To have shot at the strugglers would have been to kill Icy-Eyes, for a shotgun is not a weapon with which one can pick and choose.

Then I noticed a man lying on the floor, his eyes closed, his face pallid. He was out, perhaps out for keeps, and I knew him. He was the man who had stolen the gems of Alexis Alexandrovitch — the man who had posed as the father of Riggs, the butler.

Rapidly Icy-Eyes restored order. The man with the battered face was bound, gagged and thrown on the floor. The girl with the mole, bruised, battered, her arms bound, her mouth gagged, was left, lying on her back on the couch, her eyes showing terror and helplessness. Here and there a few silken rags remained, but, for the most part, the clothes had been literally tom from her. Both of her shoes were gone, and there remained a small part of one stocking. Her other leg was entirely bare, and already there were forming several livid bruises upon the white skin.

Icy-Eyes heaved himself into at chair at the desk, picked up the double-locked bag, which had been placed on the plate glass top, and reached inside, taking out the jewel cases, spreading them over the desk, preparing to take an inventory with pencil and paper at his side. He was methodical, this huge bulk of a man with ice-cold eyes, and the red scratches which dripped blood upon his collar.

I reached out to grip the gun behind me, ready to change all of my plans, to get Icy-Eyes covered, and, from my point of vantage, dictate my terms.

Instead of touching the gun, my hands encountered the body of a man, a man who had taken advantage of my preoccupation to creep silently up the steep steps, and was ready to spring upon me.

Desperately I threw myself around. Luck, which had played so nicely into my hands that night, seemed on the verge of playing me false. Apparently this was some new member of the gang who had crawled up the stairs, ignorant of the struggle which had been waged in the other room, seeking, perhaps a word with the watcher on duty. Instead he had seen my outline silhouetted against the light of the grille as I watched what was going on below, and he had stolen up behind me ready to strike.

He flung himself back, and I could see the gleam of light on steel as he threw around a revolver. I had pocketed my own gun when I had reached back for the shotgun, and that bit of carelessness seemed likely to cost me my life. It was my own fault, too. I had often claimed that a man should have his wits about him all the time, and here I had allowed my attention to become distracted by the unexpected sight of a struggle in the room below.

He had me covered, and that was all there was to it. There was no use making a senseless martyr of myself. He was ready to shoot and I saw it in his eyes, so I stepped back, my hands up, knowing that Icy-Eyes would decree my death, that it was now only a matter of minutes unless I could find some method of turning the tables.

Silently, he motioned me to descend the steps, reaching for the shotgun in the corner. Apparently Icy-Eyes had instructed his men to never speak a word while they were on that watching platform. At all costs he must keep the men whom he did not trust from finding out the secret of that hidden platform.

I started down the steps, ready to grab the man who was covering me by the leg if the opportunity arose, and jerk him from the platform, ready to jump back if necessary, whip out my gun and shoot it out — and then I noticed a second man standing in the room below, covering me with another one of those sawed-off shotguns and I knew the jig was up.

Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, cornered at last, murdered in a crook’s dive and his body thrown out in an alley. How the police would chuckle to themselves! And all because of one moment’s carelessness at a time when I could least afford to be careless.

After I had descended the ladder, the two men engaged in a brief, whispered conversation, searched me for weapons, taking my automatic from me, and then prepared to escort me into the main office where Icy-Eyes held forth. The men did not recognize me. Their whispered comments showed that they had no inkling who I was, or the unholy glee it would give their chief to get me in his power.

Having relieved me of weapons, the two seemed more at their ease, and led me into the corridor, one walking behind me, one ahead.

“Don’t interrupt the Chief until he gets the other matter over with,” cautioned one of the men in a whisper.

I turned on him, resolved to run a big bluff in the hope I could at least partially distract their attention.

“Ain’t you guys dicks?” I asked, a well-simulated look of surprise coming over my face.

They looked at one another blankly.

“Hell, I thought the joint was pinched,” I said. “The Chief had t’ call the other guy down to help him with the skirt, an’ he asked me to take a trick up there on the platform. I was keepin’ guard when youse guys threw down on me, an’ I figured it was a pinch.”

They scowled, and the spokesman seemed to waver a bit.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

I laughed.

“I’m the guy that worked out the whole dope on that Russian trick at Kemper’s. I got the dope on this here grand duke and told the Chief how he could work it.”

“The hell you did!” exclaimed the man, thrusting his face closer to mine. “I thought it was Lefty did that.”

I laughed, a sneering, chuckling laugh.

“Shucks, you don’t know nothin’. Here, I got the whole dope right here in my shoe, also my written pass from the Chief. I always keep ’em under the linin’ of my shoe. A bull will never think of lookin’ there on a frisk.”

With that I raised my shoe as though to untie it.

The men were puzzled. It was plain to be seen that they were fearful of making a mistake, either one way or the other. Apparently the Chief did not care for bunglers.

Taking advantage of their preoccupation, I had raised my right foot as though to take out some papers from my shoe. Instead I crashed it back in a terrific kick, leaning forward as I did so, and grasping the barrel of the gun which the man in front of me was holding.

My foot caught the man behind in the pit of the stomach, and he slumped to the floor an inert mass, unconscious. The blow had been terrific. The man who had been in front of me was taken by surprise, and I had the gun half out of his hands before he could tighten his muscles. Using the gun barrel as a lever, I pulled him over toward me, and, at the same time butted my head at his chin.

The impact dazed him, and I promptly released the gun and swung my fist to the angle of his jaw with all my weight behind it. He staggered, his knees wobbled, and he sank backward, the gun still in his hands; and I turned. They would expect me to take advantage of the occasion to make my escape, and I counted strongly on that. The one who had been hit the last would open his eyes, would be on his feet in a matter of seconds. Seeing the corridor before him he would conclude that I had dashed out into the night. He would hardly think of looking for me back on the platform.

It was with this in mind that I jumped back into the dark room and closed the door behind me. Once more I was up on the platform, but this time I was unarmed. In the necessity of returning to this place before I was seen there had been no time to recover my pistol, and, in plain truth, so urgent was my haste, that for once it had slipped my mind. I cursed my stupidity. In the game I play one cannot relax one’s vigilance for a moment, regardless of the reason.

Old Icy-Eyes had been entirely oblivious of the struggle in the hall. I had hoped that I would see him when he made his inventory of the jewels, but, apparently, he had sidetracked the jewels for other more important matters.

He was sitting on the couch beside the girl with the mole, and in his hand was a small bottle and a fine camel’s hair brush. His face was absolutely immobile, devoid of any expression. His eyes were cold and hard, and when he spoke his voice had the same toneless quality I had noticed before. It was as though he spoke almost mechanically, without expression. If the man had any feelings at all he certainly kept them from showing in his voice.

“You have sought to betray me, Maude, and you shall pay the price,” he said in that even, almost monotonous voice. “Heretofore two or three men have crossed me, and you know what has happened to them. With a woman it is different. One would be foolish to kill a woman when there are so many more effective methods of inflicting punishment.

“Your skin, for instance — I have noticed what excellent care you have taken of your skin. See how soft and white it is. Beyond doubt you are a beautiful woman, and you pride yourself on your beauty… In this little bottle I have an acid. A few strokes of this brush and your beauty will be ruined. You will be forced to go through life with a body that is finely formed, a skin that is lovely, and a face that will repel all men, all save the most bestial.

“Also I will place a drop in one eye. Not in both. I will want you to have partial sight so that you can see what a spectacle you have become. When I have finished with you your name will be a byword in criminal circles, and the woman who takes your place will remember what happens to women who seek to betray me.”

There seemed to be no gloating in his voice, no rage, but merely the cold, dispassionate tones of one who is without emotion, who experiences emotional reactions, but has them entirely in the control of the intellect, who gives no expression of feelings or passion.

With that he dipped the brush in the bottle, carefully pressing it against the side of the phial to squeeze out all of the surplus acid, to enable him to make a workmanlike job of it.

The girl was gagged and could not scream. Her arms were bound and the big hulk had part of his weight resting on her so that she could not squirm. Her legs were free, and they alone registered her panic. They kicked, twisted, writhed, and gleamed in the light of the huge incandescent in the ceiling. He had spoken but the truth when he had said that she had a pretty skin, when he had said there were more terrible ways to punish a woman than by death alone.

The man who had been fighting for her, he whose face had been so battered, struggled and strained at his bonds in a very frenzy of desperate energy. Over in the corner three of Icy-Eyes’ henchmen stood, grinning their enjoyment. There is a perverted something about men of that ilk which makes them enjoy torture.

Here was another development I had not counted on. I could not sit by and let Icy-Eyes carry out his intention. The woman with the mole had actually helped me once or twice. True she was a member of his gang, but it might well be that her present predicament was because she had sought to save me. Of course I had been prejudiced against her because of the warning the Weasel had given me, and what had immediately followed.

I sucked in a deep breath, preparing to run a bluff, to call out that I had the man covered from his secret tower, ordering him to release the girl or I would shoot. It might have worked, or might not. For all he knew I had the shotgun up there.

I never gave the shout, however, for, of a sudden there sounded another voice, a voice coming from the hallway, and then my heart stood still. The voice was that of Helen Chadwick!

I have faced death often for myself, and have faced it with an inner tranquillity, a calm smile; but here was something infinitely worse, a something I could not control, yet which caused me to break out in a cold sweat. Helen in the power of this brute.

He looked up.

“I have come to surrender, to meet your terms,” she said, as she entered the room, and there was almost a note of levity in her voice. To all appearance she was merely a carefree, brainless flapper with painted, smiling lips, steady eyes and modish clothes. It was only because I had come to know her, to appreciate the real character of the girl that I could detect the underlying heartbreak in her voice.

Icy Eyes sat down the bottle and looked at her.

“Helen Chadwick?” he asked.

She nodded.

He heaved himself to his feet and retired behind his desk. His face was smiling. It was the first time I had ever seen any expression on his countenance, and it was terrible, a gloating, triumphant, malign smile.

“You wrote me once that if I was ready to surrender, a certain man would take me to you provided I came alone and that no one sought to follow or knew where I was going. I give you my word that I have complied with those conditions.”

He nodded.

“And your reason?”

This time emotion showed in her eyes, her forehead flushed, her lips parted and she leaned forward.

“That Ed Jenkins be left alone. He got in this for my sake, and I know that he is in danger. I will acknowledge the power you have over me, and I will do as you suggest. Either I will give you money, if it is money you want, or if you desire to use me and my position I will carry out your orders.”

His eyes were as cold and frosty as twin icebergs, and he let her have it straight from the shoulder.

“Bah, you fool! Do you think I would give up Ed Jenkins for a hundred of you? But it is well. He loves you. I shall get money for the evidence I hold, and I shall get my revenge. Indeed, yes. There is a resort in Mexico which would give me real money for a girl of your beauty… and how that would torture Ed Jenkins. Think of it! I would be paid for selling you… Hah… Hah… Hah!”

It was a laugh, the first laugh I had ever heard from the man, and it was a laugh which caused cold chills to run up and down my spine. It was the laugh of a something within him, a demon, a streak of insanity, a lost soul — whatever you will — it was not a human laugh.

And then Helen caught his drift, realized the significance of the grinning men behind her, the half-naked girl lying bound and gagged on the couch.

And she smiled, a slow smile of perfect poise.

Then I knew that she was aware of her danger, of how foolish she had been to seek to sacrifice herself for me, of how futile her attempt had been, and I knew also that she was going to play the game through, to play into his hands for the sake of getting a chance to kill him.

“Well if I’m going to be sold as merchandise I’d better be looking my prettiest,” she said after the manner of an empty-headed, vain flapper; and crossed her knees, opened her vanity box, and took out a compact.

The men watched her, spellbound. Even Icy-Eyes himself was at a loss. This little slip of a girl with her casual coolness held every eye in the room. She was unarmed; of course, she would be. I had hoped desperately that there would have been a gun in that vanity case… but no, she was, as I was, merely armed with her wits, depending upon her poise, her quickness of perception to carry her through.

And then I saw something else.

The bare legs of the girl with the mole were moving, and they were moving to some purpose. While Icy-Eyes had been talking to Helen, the girl with the mole had worked her bare feet over to the little stand, behind the desk, upon which stood a telephone. Her well-formed feet seemed as graceful as hands, her toes as sentient as fingers. Despite the danger of the moment, the knowledge that I must presently venture down into that hell-pit below, I could not help thrilling at the sheer beauty of those well-formed limbs and the sure skill of the motions.

She had lifted the receiver with the toes of one foot. It was clever, ingenious — and, more than either, it was a last, desperate chance.

And then I thrilled with pride for Helen Chadwick, game little campaigner that she was. Her eyes had seen the feet of the girl with the mole, as well. While Icy-Eyes was watching her, trying to break through her calm mask of jaunty indifference, she had seen what the girl with the mole was doing, and had suddenly changed her conduct accordingly.

Abruptly her self-possession left her. Her hand trembled, her lips worked, her eyes grew wide, and she leaned a trifle forward, over toward the face of old Icy-Eyes — incidentally, nearer by inches to the telephone.

“No! NO! Not that!” she screamed. “Save me! Help! Not that!”

Almost there was a glimmer of satisfaction upon the expressionless face of the man who sat behind that desk, his pudgy fingers gripping the top, his cold eyes fastened on the girl before him. His face was heavy, sagging, but held rigidly immobile, and the great scratches gave it a peculiar, striped look, as though the soul was walled into the fleshy covering by bars of blood which stretched down his face.

“Ah, that’s better,” he breathed. “I thought I could break through that calm. You have played into my hands. Jenkins shall die, but, before he dies, he will know that the woman he loves has been sold to a Mexican hell — and that I have the money.”

“No, no” screamed the girl again. “You’re killing me. It’s worse than death. Help! Help!”

Something in the shrill carrying power of that voice seemed to disturb the man behind the desk. It was as though he sensed that the words were a signal for help, a cry that was not being wasted. He stirred uneasily.

The other men in that room, coarse, callous crooks, men who regarded women as tools and chattels, were gloating over the suffering of the girl. They had ranged themselves in a corner where they might watch her face, where they might be between her and the door. The girl with the mole lay on her back on the couch, her feet in such a position that only Helen and I could see what they were doing.

Icy Eyes shifted his position and the girl on the couch gave her legs a graceful twist, the telephone receiver dropped back into place, and Helen Chadwick became silent.

“Shut up,” growled Icy-Eyes, his hard eyes showing a look of suspicion. “This house is pretty soundproof, but you can keep your yells to yourself. I wanted to hear you scream, but I’ve had enough to satisfy me. Another yell and you’ll have a little taste of what’s coming later on.”

He turned to the three men who were standing ready to do his hell bidding.

He opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped, his eyes on the doorway.

A man with bloody features was standing on the threshold, one of the men I had knocked out.

“A spy in the house,” he said weakly, “a man was peering in through the grille. We caught him, but he broke away and got out the back some way. The wires are dead.”

This time there was expression and to spare on the face of the man at the desk.

“What! Another spy!” he shouted, glancing at the bound man on the floor, his face working in a strange mixture of rage and fear. “What is all this? Is the house full of spies? And you let him escape! Fool!”

The level tones of Helen Chadwick broke in on him.

“That will have been Ed Jenkins,” she remarked casually, as though she were speaking of the weather, “and you can prepare to die. I should have known better than to doubt him.”

There was a calm certainty in her words, something more than a threat. It was as though she spoke a prophecy.

Actually the big man quailed.

“He is a devil,” he muttered, and it was plain to be seen that at last his nerve was shaken.

“Who is now on guard at the station?”

Silence while the men exchanged glances.

“You called me to come down and help you,” ventured one of the men, “an’ I guess nobody ain’t gone back up.”

Icy-Eyes muttered a foul oath, a soul-shriveling combination of degraded words.

“Get back up there, and get ready. You’ll pay for being slack on the job later. In the meantime keep your gun trained on the door, and shoot the first man that opens it unless he’s one you know.”

The man he had addressed slunk out of the door. He would go down the corridor, enter the room below, climb the stairs and raise an alarm when he saw me. In the meantime I was unarmed, and there was no way of escape. Damn Icy-Eyes, why did he delay? Why didn’t he walk into the trap I had baited?

The door below slammed open, and I could hear footsteps on the floor, hands groping on the stairs. I had flattened myself against the base of the grille, trying to block as little as possible of the light which was coming from the den below where Icy-Eyes, confident in his own power and security, still wanted to gloat over his treasure, to make his victims wait in the horror of their suspense.

“I’ll take a look at this stuff,” he said, “and then I’ll do a little acid painting, and we’ll get started. We are going to leave this place. It has served its purpose.”

With that he reached for the box which contained the fake crown, opened it, and began to unscrew the little bolts which fastened the crown in place. Across the room the two guards watched him with inquisitive eyes, occasionally flicking a hungry glance toward the two girls.

I turned, crouched, gathered my hands beneath my chin, saw the top of a man’s head coming above the floor of the platform, and shot forward.

I had timed myself to a nicety. The head and neck had just appeared when my swooping hands shot out on a level with the floor and sought his neck.

There was a choking, gurgling cry, a smothered exclamation, and then my gripping hands had locked on the man’s throat. He tore at my hands, and finally, flung himself from the steps, throwing the whole burden of his weight upon my wrists. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. My muscles could not hold that hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight at arm’s length, and the tortured tendons weakened.

There was only one thing to be done, and I did it with what was almost a prayer. I threw myself forward, still retaining my grip, and we plunged headlong into the darkness of the drop below.

There was not enough space for us to turn in the air. I held my arms out before me like a driver holds his hands, and between my fingers was the neck of the crook. We fell in that position, and I thudded to the floor atop him. I had felt his head strike first, had felt the bones beneath my fingers give a twist, a dull snap, and I knew I had no more to fear from that man.

Quickly, I dashed up the ladder to the platform again.

Icy-Eyes had loosened the bolts and was on the point of lifting the crown from the box.

“What was that noise?” he bellowed, his pasty face turned toward the grille.

I disguised my voice as much as possible.

“Fell off the stairs and knocked out a tooth,” I said.

He cursed again.

“Of all the damned incompetency. You fellows are going to have an accounting for all the blunders you’ve pulled today.”

With that he lifted the crown from the box, his hands cupped about the gold rim, in exactly the position a man’s hands would naturally assume in lifting such an ornament.

And then he yelled, yelled and jumped back.

“I’ve been stabbed,” he shouted, holding his bleeding hand high in the air.

A trickle of blood was coming down from the palm. And then his eyes caught the flutter of paper within the box. Without thinking he read the few words it contained aloud.

And then the coward of the man came out. He saw the ingenious construction of that crown, saw that when it was lifted from the box a hollow needle sprang out on each of the four sides and that a greenish fluid was squirted through the hollow openings. One of these needles had caught him full in the palm.

“Quick!” he shouted, tying a handkerchief about his wrist, trying to choke off the circulation of the blood. “I have been poisoned — I must get to a doctor. Bring that stuff, those jewels, get the things in the safe. I will take them with me. Hurry!”

Bah! What a fool he was for all of his boasted intelligence. A certain amount of cunning I granted him, yes. He could sit behind his desk with a score of crooks to do his bidding and direct their activities. He was ruthless and cruel enough to inspire a certain amount of deference in his underlings. All of these things had helped to give him power, to make him feel that he was invincible; but it is one thing to sit behind a desk with armed guards watching to insure a man’s safety, and quite another to be out in the world without an organization of helpers, fighting society singlehanded.

If he had known crooks as I knew them he would have never betrayed that secret. They had seen the blood, had realized the ingenious construction of the crown, had heard him read the note, and saw the fear of death on his face. These men who worked for him as long as he was a power, as long as he could hold murder charges over their heads, grant them police immunity while they worked for him, guarantee the gallows when they failed, were like rats in a vessel, half-starved, desperate. Let one among them become stricken and he became the prey of the pack.

So it was with Icy-Eyes. As these crooks looked at it, there was a fortune in jewelry before their eyes, another fortune in the safe, ready to be taken for the asking, two beautiful women in their power. The chief wanted them to take all of the booty to a safe place, wanted them to rush him to a doctor. Why should they do so? In fifteen minutes, if they but waited, he would be dead. He had lost his power over them and there was a king’s ransom within reach.

They exchanged glances, and then advanced.

At that last minute Icy-Eyes read their faces, saw what he had turned loose, realized that the pack had turned against him. Already the fear of death was bringing the cold drops of perspiration to his brow, oozing through the white, taut skin of the temples, trickling down the blood-stained cheeks. He was not a pretty spectacle.

At that, his mind did not entirely desert him, for he looked toward the grille.

“Shoot these traitors,” he ordered. “Shoot to kill!”

Then he waited.

The others had momentarily forgotten about that watch tower behind the grille and they fell back, white, startled, of half a mind to surrender. Had he taken advantage of that moment he might have again controlled the situation, forced them to do his bidding. Had he countermanded those orders promptly and bluffed his way through, he could have cowed them.

But he was too vindictive, too cold. He waited, eyes upturned, wondering why there was no response to his orders.

Fool! Even had the watcher been there, he would have naturally sided with his comrades. One does not gain honor or advancement by fighting for the dead, and, in the eyes of his men, Icy-Eyes was as good as dead already, merely a meandering corpse who was cheating the grave by minutes.

When there was nothing but silence from behind that grille, the men advanced again, and this time with more confidence. Icy-Eyes read their intent, and his cowering was painful to behold. The part of the suppliant did not become him, and yet, like most fat men, he was a physical coward. It was the gleam of the knives as much as the fear of poison that sent him to his knees, pleading, begging, promising, and yet, through it all, despite the terror in his eyes, there was the same old chill in their frosty depths.

At the last he lowered his face, covered his eyes, moaned, whimpered, shrieked, and then the knives plunged home. They did not care to wait, these two crooks, so intent upon getting their hands on the loot. If they waited for the poison there might be other crooks show up, more accomplices to divide with. As it was, they would split everything two ways, jewels, money and women.

Nor had Helen Chadwick been idle. She had flown to the side of the girl with the mole, had stripped off the gag and was working at the knots of the rope.

I dashed from the platform, scurried down the steps and into the hall. They would need protection now, those two girls.

And then there came a sudden, spine-chilling sound, a sound which is well calculated to strike terror into the marrow of a crook — the long shrieking wail of a siren!

Then it was that I entered the room.

“The police are on their way up the front walk, gentlemen,” I said, with a bow toward the bloody-handed crooks. “Murder will be the charge if you are caught. The back way is still open.”

They needed nothing further. Like rats leaving a sinking vessel, they stampeded from the room and flat-footed it down the hall, running with the heavy, awkward, lumbering gait of men whose minds and bodies have commenced to slow down.

I heard a metallic, gurgling sound from the floor, and saw Icy-Eyes, stabbed as he was, his life blood gurgling from him, his eyes filled with a stony hatred, trying to crawl toward me. He knew now, damn him. Then he saw that he could not make it… there was sheer panic in his eyes, panic and a cold hatred, as the film of death crept over those icy eyes.

Helen Chadwick was in my arms, and there was the sound of a police machine skidding to a stop before the curb.

“Quick!” I told her. “For you to be caught in this hell-hole would be worse than the publication of the papers. Out the back way, quick! There is still time. I will join you later; my way of escape is all blocked out. Have faith in me and hurry!”

I pushed her toward the door, and she saw the truth in what I said, and she, too, floated down the corridor, as lightly as gossamer. They would not catch her.

Frenziedly, I turned to the safe.

It had been said of me that there was no safe I could not open, and open in such a way that it would not show it had been tampered with. Never had I such need of my reputed skill. I was working against minutes, against seconds. The police were banging the doors of the machine as they tumbled out, got their shotguns at ready, and started to rush the house. They were coming all right, but they were coming prepared.

A stethoscope attached to a battery-worked sound-amplifier was all I ordinarily needed, a little outfit that was always carried in a case suspended beneath my left armpit. In a very ecstasy of haste I spun the dials, detected the combination, flung open the doors and dove inside. Jewels there were, money, gold, platinum. All of these I flung to one side. The police were banging at the door of the house, trying to force it. From the side, there was the crashing of glass as they broke in a window. On the couch behind me I could hear the sound of movement as the girl with the mole cast loose her bonds. On the floor the man with the battered features, he who had championed her cause and who had been a witness of all that had taken place, writhed and twisted.

I would get life, anyway, perhaps would be hung. Do what I might, the police would catch me in that room of corpses, that rendezvous of crooks, surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of stolen gems, find me even in the act of looting the safe. My criminal record and the very fact of my presence would be all a jury would need; but they could all be damned to them. I would find and destroy those Chadwick papers.

Just as there came the sound of feet in the corridor, the heavy, aggressive footsteps of the law, I found the paper I wanted, the last of the evidence against Helen’s family, against her father’s name, the paper that was to be published by one party to help in a political campaign for city control, the paper that two factions were fighting for, the only scrap of evidence that was left.

The flame from my match flickered a bit, then caught.

“Hands up!” yelled a bluecoat from the door.

I stepped to one side and elevated my hands with a grin. The evidence I had sought to destroy was rapidly becoming a mass of ashes and the slow-witted officer could not fathom the situation, had not the presence of mind to try and stamp out the flame. It was as well. I would have killed him with my bare hands.

The flame died down, and the hallway was a jostling, crowding mass of men. I stepped back, and, in doing so, managed to grind the ashes beneath my heel.

“It’s Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook!” yelled a detective who stood behind the bluecoat in the doorway. “By God, Ed, you’ll get the rope for this night’s work!”

Then they advanced with a rush. Handcuffs were nipped over my wrists and over my ankles as well. These men knew of my reputation, had had too many dealings with me. They were taking no chances on my living up to my reputation to escape them.

Then there sounded the voice of a man with authority, and a sergeant came down the hall. He had arrived a little late, apparently, but there was something in his bearing which showed the importance he gave the case.

“Thelma!” he shouted. “Are you all right, Thelma?” and there seemed more than mere anxiety in his voice.

Then she spoke, that girl on the sofa — the girl with the mole, the girl I knew as Maude Enders.

“Jake a million,” she said. “Get the men out of here while I put some clothes on.”

She was sitting up on the couch, and there was an end of the couch cover which she was holding up beneath her chin. The officers had been so excited over capturing me, over the tumbled mass of jewelry which had come from the safe, that they had hardly noticed her.

“Benny’s on the floor,” she went on, “and he’s been pretty badly done up. Get the men out. I’m a sight.”

The sergeant snapped out crisp orders, and the men left the room, taking me with them. The girl said something else I could not catch, and the sergeant bawled out another order. “Hold that bird, Jenkins. Don’t take him to the wagon,” he said.

Thereafter the door banged shut and I could hear nothing other than the excited comments of the policemen who had staged the raid, a summary of my past crimes, speculation as to whether or not I had committed the murder, and puzzled comment on the fact that I had not tried to escape when I heard the siren.

I said nothing.

The law had me in its toils. I could not even make a defense. The truth could never be told. Any story I might try to make stand up before a jury would be instantly ridiculed when the prosecutor showed the string of convictions after my name. Society damned me, just as I damned society. Laws were made for the protection of the innocent, not to insure a fair trial for a crook.

And then the door was thrown open and the sergeant snapped an order, as crisp as the rattle of a machine gun.

“Jenkins, there — turn him loose and send him in here, alone. Alone, mind you; then go through the house and keep out of this room until I call you.”

In wondering silence the men complied with his orders. Their responsibilities ceased when I went through that door, but they took good care that I did go through it. I was covered by no less than three shotguns as I went into the room.

The door banged shut and I noticed the girl with the mole sitting still on the edge of the sofa, some other clothes around her, and some of her old ones pinned up. The man with the battered face was laying back on the sofa. Behind the desk, in the chair where Icy-Eyes had sat, there was the sergeant, and his keen gray eyes went over my every feature.

“Jenkins,” he said crisply, “you are a wonder. We can’t follow your every move in the whole thing, but you have done us all a great service.

“As you probably have surmised, Thelma here is a police ‘lure,’ a girl who has gone from the night life to helping the police. This was the toughest job we have ever had to tackle. No one knew of her identity as a tool of the police other than the Weasel. We suspected that he had warned you, but others suspected him as well of having interests against the interests of this crime ring, and he was killed.

“This man,” with a gesture toward the crumpled corpse of Icy-Eyes, “was the greatest criminal of modem times. He had unlimited financial resources, and he organized a regular crime syndicate. He got his start through bootlegging, and whatever else prohibition may have done, either of good or bad, it has certainly made it easy for the criminal classes to organize, to get funds for their war on society. This man had a genius for organization and for discipline, and he recognized the weakness of crooks in general. He wielded absolute power, and he knew no limits. He took the whole composite mass of crookdom and organized it. He had fences on a salary, gem cutters, even owned jewelry stores. Thelma and Benny got the dope. Thelma made the contact and got Benny into the game.

“But all the time you kept butting in. Twice Thelma tipped us off to give you a free hand, just in the nick of time, and the police facilitated your escape instead of hindered it. Several times you did us good turns. All of the time Thelma was collecting lists of names, places and properties. Now we can crush out the whole thing.

“What you have done tonight, and why, is known to but three of us aside from yourself, and those whom you took into your confidence. As far as the department is concerned, there will never be so much as a whisper. Are you satisfied?”

I looked at their faces.

“I am free to go?”

He nodded. “Not only that, but the police are going to be more friendly with you. We have seen something of what you are up against. If you want to come on the force as a secret operative there will be an opening.”

I shook my head, but said nothing. I would not hurt the feelings of Thelma, the police lure, by saying ill of her profession. Each man to his taste.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be going.”

He extended his hand.

“Here’s to a brave man,” he said, and his eyes were two shining points of light as his hand clasped mine.

There came a tumble of feminine charm, of fluttering silk, and then two bare arms went around my neck, and two warm lips pressed to mine.

“That’s my tribute,” said the girl with the mole, and then, half hysterically, she grabbed a handkerchief and began daubing at my mouth.

“My lips came off,” she giggled, “and you’re going to see her tonight — this morning. It would never do to have my mouth plastered on your face.”

It was indeed morning.

I stepped to the door and looked at the sergeant.

He nodded, threw it open, and escorted me to the battered outer door.

“Boys,” he said, “the department has nothing on Ed Jenkins, nothing at all. Good morning, Jenkins.”

I walked down the steps, on to the cement walk. Dawn was breaking. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance. Behind me I saw the startled faces of half a score of policemen and detectives.

“The Phantom Crook — through our fingers again!” exclaimed a voice behind me. “How did he do it?”

They never knew the answer.

I strolled out into the crisp air as casually as a banker taking an early morning constitutional.

They were sitting up for me at Kemper’s house, and there was a chorus of relieved exclamations when I came walking in.

My taxicab was waiting outside, but, somehow I sensed I should not mention the fact. The driveway to the garage was a distance back from the house.

I smiled at the girl.

“It’s finished, Helen. The paper is destroyed and Icy-Eyes has been paid in full of account.”

Her eyes were big, luminous.

“Ed,” she said, slowly, “you stayed behind to get that paper. I didn’t think of it at the time. How did you escape the police?”

I rubbed the back of my hand over my lips.

“Easy,” I grinned, “the detectives were kissing me when I left.”

Kemper laughed, but his wife watched me narrowly.

I fancied I saw a slight shudder come over the girl’s face.

“Ed… Ed — tell me — did you poison him?”

I shook my head.

“Poison would have been too good for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was sort of sneaky. However, there wasn’t any need for it. I planted a green dye in those needles, and knew that the note would do the rest. You see I know crooks, and I knew that the gems would be delivered to him at the place where he kept his other gems, knew that no one except him would have the time to take a small wrench and take out the crown, knew that when he was pricked and saw that note, he would spill the beans. I understand the psychological processes of crooks and knew that as soon as the men he had associated with him realized he was doomed, they would set on him like wolves, and that he would go down before the pack.

“The girl with the mole was a detective. That was why I had been warned against her. She managed to call the police and that interfered with my plans. The operator heard your voice imploring for help, connected the line with the police station, traced the call and they came out. That gummed my game. I had expected the death of the arch crook and then I wanted to get that paper after the gang had looted the safe of jewelry. I knew they wouldn’t touch papers, but would only take gems and cash. The arrival of the police made it difficult; but — well, I burnt that letter.”

Helen hung her head a trifle.

“I should have had more confidence in you, Ed. When I realized that you were baiting a trap with yourself, and, watching in the night, saw you go, I determined that I’d give myself up before I’d let you take such chances, run such dangers. I went directly to this man to surrender, to let him keep the paper, to do anything to obtain your safety.”

Loring Kemper blew his nose violently.

His wife was watching us with a tolerant, indulgent smile.

“Mr. Kemper thinks he can get pardons for you, Ed,” went on the girl, “fix it so you will be free to come and go as you choose… to live like any other person… to have a business… join clubs… settle down…”

I kept my eyes averted while I tried to tell them.

“That would be wonderful of him, mighty square; but you don’t understand, Helen. I am of the shadows. Society is against me and always will be, in spite of all the pardons in the world. My wife would always be known as the wife of a crook… my children would be handicapped from the start. My name tarnishes that which it touches… Excuse me a minute. I’ll get some things from my room.”

With that I was up, bowing casually, and through the portieres. I could not stand more. I loved her, and my ways were of the half-world, the borderland. I could not bring disgrace upon a thoroughbred, and they could not understand.

They did not suspect my purpose, but waited for my return, and I sprinted down the hall, through the side door, across the dewy grass, and into the taxicab.

“Anywhere,” I snapped at the driver as I banged the door shut.

He looked at me curiously, started the car with a lurch and rounded the corner.