The Blonde in Lower Six

Chapter Twenty

It was a tingling of the hair roots which made me feel that the flesh on the back of my neck was crawling. I knew the sensation from past experiences, knew what it meant.

There, in the narrow, smelly streets of Chinatown, I fought down the impulse to turn and confront the man who was following me. By an effort of will I maintained the shuffling, shambling gait of a Chinaman, a gait which belonged with my present disguise. My mind raced on ahead of my lagging feet. If the man behind me knew he was following Ed Jenkins, disguised as a Chinaman, that would be one thing. If he thought he was following Yee Dooey Wah, a Chinese cook, that would be another. I must find out.

Ahead of me a stooped figure shuffled from the door of a café. Soo Hoo Duck, parchment-faced philosopher, reputed to be the uncrowned king of Chinatown, awaited me. Twice before he had sought to interview me, and twice before I had avoided him.

This time I could not avoid him. Nor could the meeting have come at a more inopportune time. Complications were piling up.

I was a fugitive — from the police, but not from justice. And there was a price on my head in the underworld. Ed Jenkins, known in many states as “the Phantom Crook,” immune from arrest in California because of a flaw in the extradition laws, could never hope for peace. Police wanted to blame crimes on me, crimes which they could not solve otherwise. Leaders of the underworld feared me.

At one time the police had promised protection, friendship. But there had been complications. I would neither be a stool-pigeon for the police, nor a crook for the leaders of the underworld.

And so I found myself, disguised as a Chinese cook, stained of face, shabby of clothes, hiding from the bright light of the day, and venturing forth upon the narrow streets of Chinatown only at night.

For myself I did not fear. I would have kept in the open, defied police and underworld alike. But there was Helen Chadwick. I had been of service to her, saved her from the clutches of a powerful crook. She had sworn her friendship, but I had evaded the issue and sunk from sight. A man with my record dares not even analyze his feelings for a society girl of the four hundred.

Yet the girl’s friendship for me, and my feelings for her, were a constant menace. At any time the underworld might seek to reach me through her. At any moment the police might set a trap and bait it with the one bait I could not overlook — threatened injury to Helen Chadwick.

Hence I had adopted a disguise, had slipped through the fingers of police and crooks alike.

And always I was on the alert, pressed every moment by two dangers. One was that I should be recognized, my disguise penetrated by the crooks on the one hand, or the police on the other. The other was that organized Chinatown should demand an accounting of the mysterious Chinaman who remained secreted during the day and came forth only in the dim light of the night.

And now both dangers had materialized at the same moment.

Behind me came mysterious footsteps; ahead of me waited Soo Hoo Duck.

Could I carry through the deception with the old Chinaman? Was my knowledge of that most subtle of all languages, the Cantonese dialect, sufficient to stand the searching scrutiny of the old patriarch?

Even as I contemplated the problem, it was upon me.

My shuffling feet advanced me to the café door and Soo Hoo Duck stepped before me, screwed his wrinkled face into a monkey smile, and peered shrewdly at me over the tops of his horned-rimmed spectacles.

“Hoh shai kai mah!”

It was the Cantonese salutation, a question. Translated literally it meant, “Is the whole world good?”

“Hoh shai kai,” I answered — the conventional reply. “The whole world is good.”

And so, disguised as a Chinaman, I was standing in a dark, narrow street of Chinatown, seeking to account for myself before Soo Hoo Duck. And ever in the back of my mind, during the first few words of that interview, was the disquieting feeling that the old man was laughing at me — that and the knowledge that someone had followed me, was approaching even as I bandied words with the king of Chinatown.

“A stream which runs in a winding course must have mountains in its path,” mused the old man, his eyes peering cunningly over the dark rims of his spectacles.

I bowed gravely.

“And yet, oh Wise One, the stream eventually reaches the ocean. Mountains may obstruct, the stream may swerve, but, in its very swerving, it is fulfilling the law of life.”

The wrinkles about his mouth deepened.

“Perhaps the stream may become surrounded by obstructions. What then?”

He was inquisitive, and yet he seemed friendly.

I matched his smile.

“In that event, Learned One, the stream becomes a lake, and the calm tranquillity of its surface mirrors the obstructions which have given it beauty, serenity; which, by damming it up, have become the very creators of the lake.”

I spoke the words slowly, sparring for time.

“Then,” said Soo Hoo Duck with a trace of impatience in his tone, “you have ceased to be a brook, and have become a lake.”

I met his eyes steadily.

“Your excellency will remember that it is the brook which babbles. When water has ceased to run it becomes silent.”

He was a good sport, this puckery-faced Chink. He laughed at that, and, at that instant, the man who had been shadowing me, walked slowly past, forced into the bright light of the Yat King Café.

Never have I seen a human being who so resembled a vulture. He was tall, stooped, red-eyed. As he walked, his long nose twitched, a continual, spasmodic snuffling. His reddish eyes blinked constantly, as though the light irritated them. His thin neck dropped forward so that his chin hung out over his shoes, and the narrow collar which surrounded that thin neck was like a wedding ring about a lead pencil.

As for clothes, he was dressed entirely in black, and he slipped softly by on rubber-soled shoes.

Abruptly I became conscious that the Chinese philosopher had riveted me with his eyes, had followed my gaze. Of a sudden the kindly look dropped from his face, and his eyes bored into mine as though they had been twin gimlets of cold, black steel.

“Where the buzzards fly there will soon be carrion,” he intoned.

I returned his scrutiny.

“And yet, my brother, it is well known that the buzzard does not kill. He merely devours that which has ceased to live. The wise man should fear the hawk rather than the buzzard.”

With that I turned away, left the aged philosopher digesting a little new philosophy. He had been too quick to compare me with a coursing brook, too ready with his comment about the vulture-like appearance of the man who had followed me. Perhaps that man followed me, thinking I was a Chinaman, believing in my disguise. If so, he followed me at the direction of some powerful Chinese, and Soo Hoo Duck was the uncrowned king of Chinatown.

Yet, and this was the disquieting thought, perhaps my enemies had pierced my disguise, knew that the Chinaman who always circled the block before starting on any errand, was, in fact, Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook.

I hurried on, seeking to turn the tables, to become the one who followed, and, behind me, Soo Hoo Duck wrinkled his face in silent mirth.

The buzzard had gained a block. His awkward, ungainly shuffle carried him rapidly over the ground and I lengthened my stride. Then I noticed that there was one ahead of me, a beady-eyed Chinaman who was bearing purposefully down upon the ungainly figure.

I dropped back, waiting, watching. Ahead of me the buzzard quickened his pace until it became almost a trot, the arms flapping loosely from the shoulders as though they had been wings. A taxicab swung around the corner and I heard the voice of the buzzard for the first time as he hailed the cab — a raucous, throaty cry.

I pressed on. There had been pursuit and flight in the actions of those ahead. Perhaps I could get the license number of the cab, find out more concerning the identity of the Chinaman who had engaged in the mysterious pursuit. One thing was certain — that Chinaman had not been following the buzzard when I stopped to chat with Soo Hoo Duck.

The license number of the cab I secured. The Chinaman crowded to the edge of the sidewalk, against the shadows of the dingy buildings, and suddenly vanished. As I passed the spot a second later, I could discern no sign of a doorway; yet I knew that in the side of the dark building on my left there was a secret entrance. A hidden door had swung silently open and the Chinaman had vanished within.

Nor did I pause for a careful inspection of the wall of that building. Shuffling steps scuttled along the pavement behind me. Soo Hoo Duck had taken up my trail. His hands were concealed within the loose sleeves of his padded coat and the smile was gone from his wrinkled countenance.

Abruptly, I crossed the street and entered the Mandarin Café, one of the chop suey joints that cater to the tourist trade. For some reason, which I could not quite fathom, Chinatown was becoming too hot for Ed Jenkins. Calmly, impassively, I slippety-slopped my way through the main dining-room, into the kitchen, past the huge range with its brass kettles, into a narrow oblong of darkness which marked a back passageway that went I knew not where.

There were steps, a door, more steps, black darkness, and the feel of the wind on my right cheek. I turned so that this wind was squarely in my face, took a few steps and found myself in a dark alley. Flattening myself against the side of a building, I waited within the damp darkness.

There was the sound of running feet and a slim, stealthy figure entered the alley, paused for a swift glance in both directions, and then trotted toward the patch of dull light which marked the nearest outlet of the alley.

I sighed, and turned back into the passageway, retraced my steps, went through the kitchen, into the main dining-room of the Mandarin Café, and out upon the street. A vacant taxicab stood before the door. I dove within, gave the driver an address, changed it after two blocks, had him drive twice around the next block, and then went directly to the railroad depot where I handed a red-cap a baggage check and waited while he brought me a big suitcase which had been checked at the baggage room. I had previously made all preparations necessary to the changing of my disguise whenever necessity might arise and I could have made a dozen such changes had I cared.

My next address was the most exclusive tourist hotel in the city. I changed my disguises in the cab. The brown stain of the skin remained the same, aiding me in my new role. I had entered the cab as a Chinaman. I left it as a wealthy Mexican. The driver blinked, pocketed the bill I handed him for a tip and drove rapidly away.

Half an hour later I had established myself as Señor Juan Morales, and as Señor Morales I looked up the cab which had borne the buzzard away from Chinatown. The driver consulted his records, pocketed the banknote I gave him, and pointed to a pencilled address with a grimy forefinger.

“There yuh are, boss,” he said.

Schooled as I am to conceal my emotions, I could feel the blood drain from my face. The address was that of Helen Chadwick!

That which I feared had taken place.

For years the police stool-pigeons had sought to find some weak point in my defense. For years organized crooks had tried to work out some method by which they could control me, force me to do their will. Their efforts had been in vain. I had been a lone wolf, a creature of the shadows who kept his own counsel. And then had come Helen Chadwick. Recognizing the utter futility of any romance, knowing the danger to her, I had taken stem steps to see that we were not thrown together, that there should be no opportunity for romance to develop, that her name should never be linked with mine.

But the underworld has a thousand eyes which can see in the dark.

And now I was faced with the horrible certainty — the underworld knew.

“I guess that’s not the one I wanted,” I said to the cab driver, striving to make my voice sound casual, and turned away.

Within fifteen minutes I was frantically undoing the elaborate scheme I had perfected for concealment. Either the underworld or the police were menacing the girl I loved. Through her they sought to strike at me.

Very well. If they wanted to find me they would have no trouble. The disguises I ripped off. The stain upon my skin was removed with a chemical preparation. I had left Chinatown as Yee Dooey Wah, a Chinese cook. I had entered the hotel as Señor Juan Morales, a Mexican millionaire. I left the hotel as Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook.

Calling a cab, I stepped within and gave the driver a laconic direction. “The Mandarin Café, in Chinatown.”

He nodded and grinned, thinking that I was a tourist going down into the night life of Chinatown for a thrill. Little could he know just how much of a thrill it would be. Stripped of disguises, flaunting my identity to criminals and police alike, I was headed for the place where I had last encountered danger.

I could defend myself. Crooks and police mean but little to me when I have a free hand. It was not by accident that I had become known from coast to coast as the Phantom Crook. But Helen Chadwick I could not watch. I had not dared to even show my interest in her, lest the very display of such interest should doom her. The underworld works its schemes cleverly, and the police are not asleep. Both capitalize most strongly on that attraction which nature has built up between man and woman. Man desires to be near those whom he loves; he will fight to protect his loved ones.

Many a crook is serving time because the police trapped him by watching the girl who meant more to him than anything in the world. Many a man has been framed because the police could count upon his coming to the rescue of the girl he loved.

And now they were trying it with me.

Very well. It would work. It always works. But there would be no sly, slinking shadow sneaking up to the house of Helen Chadwick, seeking to protect her, no Chinese cook nor Mexican millionaire trying to guard her. It would be Ed Jenkins, the Lone Wolf, the Phantom Crook himself, that would descend upon the underworld, and make that best of all defenses — a counter attack. Trap me through Helen Chadwick, would they? Damn them. I’d walk into their trap and smash it.

The cab lurched to a stop before the Mandarin Café, and I discharged it with a flourish, sneered at the inquisitive faces which peered about me, and went slowly up the flight of narrow steps, my coat over my arm, my jaw set.

Ed Jenkins was back in the underworld.

How the news traveled! A slinking hop-head by the doorway took one look and then dashed madly down the stairs. A whining stool-pigeon who held his head low and glanced at things about him with the flickering eyes of a human jackal, paid his check midway in the course of his meal and scuttled for a telephone. The whole atmosphere of the place became suddenly charged with static electricity.

I selected a table, snapped my fingers to a waiter, gave my order and sat back, watching the curling spirals of eddying smoke from my cigarette, speculating on what the events of the next half hour would be. Those who knew me would know that my very appearance in this place was an invitation to a duel, one of those subtle duels in which the weapons are human pawns and in which no quarter is given or asked.

And yet it was in this way, and in this way alone, that I could save Helen Chadwick. The intrigue of the underworld was clutching at her with its slimy fingers, seeking to control me through her. Now that I had disclosed myself, come out into the spotlight, I could probably count on two things; one was that they would leave her alone, the second was that I would be sucked into the swirling vortex of exciting events.

There was a commotion at the door.

Soo Hoo Duck entered, shuffled across the room and paused before my table.

“You eatum noodle?” he asked in bland pidgin-English.

Perhaps he knew who I was, perhaps not. If he knew me for the man who had talked with him earlier in the evening he knew that I could talk Cantonese. Also I fancied Soo Hoo Duck could speak English as well as the average college graduate. Yet now he stood before my table and talked the broken pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie.

I nodded a curt answer to his question. I was in no mood for the subtleties of Chinese diplomacy.

“You eatum all alone?”

Again I nodded.

“Heap no good eatum allee time alone. You cat chum some one piecee fliend, maybeso two piecee fliend heap more better. You savvy me? I heap savvy you. I heap fliend you.”

I studied the motionless wrinkles of the impassive face and sought to pierce the wall of black reserve which hung before his beady eyes. Was he fishing for an invitation to join me at my meal? I shrugged my shoulders. It was to be a lone game.

“I no savvy you,” I said, and turned my shoulder to him.

Without another word he slippety-slap-slipped away, his shuffling feet moving with a slow rhythm which somehow conveyed the impression of offended dignity.

Two men slipped in the door, men who were panting from a hasty ascent of the stairs, men who glanced quickly about the room before they settled themselves at a table.

I marked their faces for future reference.

From the back door there came a party of three pasty-faced fellows with ratty eyes and vicious mouths. There was a startling similarity of appearance in the three. Stoop-shouldered they were, white, furtive, yet garbed in the most expensively tailored clothes.

There sounded heavy feet on the stairs and a square-toed, broad-shouldered, bullet headed individual slumped his way into the room and jostled over to a table in the corner — a plainclothes detective.

The stage was set.

Evidently three separate factions had been sufficiently interested in the appearance of Ed Jenkins to rush special representatives to the scene. Nor could I be sure that they were not all three working in a common cause.

The two heavy-set fellows who had first entered were typical strong-arm men. They were probably instructed to kidnap me, throw me in a waiting car, take me to some secret destination. The three stoop-shouldered, putty-faced men were “guns,” men who represented the typical gangster killers. Now that prohibition had systematized crime, had placed ready money in the hands of criminal gangs, they were a type that was becoming daily more common. The plainclothes man had apparently been sent to watch and listen, and he was more than likely in cahoots with one or both of the other factions.

I leisurely ate my chicken noodles, sipped my tea and looked about me, waiting for the first move that would enable me to plan my campaign, start my counter offensive.

And I was unarmed. I rarely carry a gun. It is a felony for a crook to possess a weapon and I dare not take the chances of having a gun on me. I depend on my wits. A cop might pinch me for having a gun under my arm, but he can’t arrest me for having my wits about me.

And now I was without a plan. Usually I try to keep one jump ahead of events, to have a general plan of campaign. But this time I was not my own master. Events had crowded my hand. Helen Chadwick was in danger and I must force things to an issue. Nor did I misunderstand the situation in the slightest. For some reason I had suddenly become a creature of importance in crookdom. This sudden interest in me was not merely because of my record or on account of past scores. Somewhere, somehow, something was happening concerning which I knew nothing, yet the happening of which was making me of prime importance in the plans of somebody, perhaps of several somebodies.

Lord knows there were enough complicating factors of the situation there in that smelly Chinese café, and yet I kept watching the outer door, feeling that there would be still other developments. Perhaps it was the attitude of the men, a sort of tense waiting. Perhaps it was a hunch, perhaps merely the emotional strain. Whatever it was, it kept me watching the outer door.

Five minutes passed, and the swinging door shot back under the impetus of a stiff-armed jab that would have rocked a prize-fighter. The man who stepped into the room and sneeringly contemplated those within was more or less known to me. Twice before he had been pointed out to me, and each time the pointing had been accompanied with a warning.

Bob Garret, a hound for publicity, one of the outstanding figures on the detective force, bold, ruthless, clever after a cunning fashion — and, as he stood there, contemptuously turning his glittering eyes from face to face, I knew his errand. He, too, was interested in Ed Jenkins. I could read it in his glance, in his every gesture.

At length his eyes locked with mine. For several seconds we stared at each other. He seeking to overawe me by his very gaze; I refusing to lower my eyes. Then he came forward.

“Ah, Jenkins. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I’ve seen many of your — er — photographs.”

I said nothing. As a crook, society had labeled me an outcast. I had no rights save such as I could command. I could no more openly resent the insult in the man’s voice than I could the brazen assurance with which he drew up a chair and sat at my table.

He extracted a black cigar from his pocket, clipped the end, scraped a match across the sole of his shoe, and regarded me appraisingly through the film of blue tobacco smoke.

“The Phantom Crook, eh?”

No reply was apparently expected from me. The words had been merely in the nature of a taunting preliminary. It is by such methods that the police break down the spirit of those with whom they deal, sneer them back into the shadows whenever they would rehabilitate themselves. I was used to it. Yet I resented it. If society desired to confine me within barred walls that was the privilege of society — provided it could catch me and prove its case. But when I sought to keep within the law I should have been given the privileges of a citizen, freedom from police persecution. However, society creates conditions, not theories. And, in the meantime, here was this pudgy detective sneering at me across the table.

About forty-one or two, he was, and there was the look in his eyes which creeps into the eyes of those who are accustomed to achieve their ends by bully-ragging and hypocrisy. His face was scraped and massaged to plump pinkness. The great knuckles of his ham-like hands were cushioned beneath a layer of soft fat. Plainly he was one who liked the good things of life. Probably he had started as a youth to fight his way to the top, and then sheer animal cunning had served his purpose better. He was a combination of fighter and coward, of a cunning man and a fool — and the law had clothed him with the majesty of its authority, had given him license to do almost as he wished with those who had once been unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of organized society and to be thenceforth labeled as ex-convicts, crooks.

“Not very glad to have me as a dinner companion, are you?”

The words were spoken with the easy assurance of one who knows that he has the backing of unlimited power; but they, at least, called for an answer.

I raised my eyes from my food, let them bore into his so that he could get the full meaning of my answer.

“No,” I said, and spat the word at him.

His eyes shifted somewhat beneath the hostility of my gaze, and the knowledge that they had shifted angered him.

“All right. Let’s get down to business.”

He flipped a careless little finger across the end of his cigar, scattering ashes over the table, upon my butter, into my food, and his pink face came forward as he lowered his voice.

“Jenkins, you’re a crook. You’re wanted in other states. Because you’ve found a hole in the extradition laws you’re all clear in California. You’ve developed a technique with safes that’s never been equalled anywhere, and no one knows just how you do it. You always seem to have plenty of money, and you’re a Lone Wolf.”

He ceased speaking to take a deep drag at his heavy cigar, and I said nothing. No answer was necessary. He had spoken only the simple truth, the bare facts.

He withdrew the cigar and let his eyes bore into mine.

“All right. You’ve made a boob of the department long enough. The jig’s up.”

Again he paused.

“Yes?” I asked, casually.

My tone angered him. I could see the flush come to his scraped cheeks.

“Yes. It’s a cinch you’re working. And it’s a cinch you’re holding out on us. Come across with a fifty-fifty split or you’re going bye-bye up San Quentin way.”

“I’m keeping within the law in California,” I said simply.

The words irritated him more than anything I could have said.

“Well, what if you are, you damned fool? Does that make any gravy for me? What’d yuh think this is, a summer resort? I don’t give a whoop in hell about your record or your intentions. I want fifty per cent of the gravy; and if you ain’t gettin’ it I’m losin’ fifty per cent just the same as though you was holdin’ out on me.”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was the same old line. I’d heard it so much that my ears were as weary of it as of last year’s popular song.

“Yes, you have no bananas,” I said, knowing that this man and myself were bound to become sworn enemies after this interview.

His face became fairly livid.

“All right, you cheap, second-story crook. Try that line and see what I hang on to you. D’yuh think I give a damn whether you’re within the law or not? I’ll frame a crime on you that’ll get a jury to send you up in ten seconds after the case reaches ’em. You don’t dare even take the witness stand with the record that’s against you. You’ve got to do what I say and do it damned quick.”

He was right as to part of it, wrong as to the rest. The law is a strange assortment of injustices. When a man has once been convicted of crime he becomes absolutely within the power of the police. Charge him with crime and he is done for. Of course the law says that the District Attorney cannot introduce any evidence of prior convictions. Oh, no. That would not be right. The jury must pass on the man’s guilt or innocence of the particular crime for which he is being tried. But the law also says that when a “witness” is on the stand he can be impeached as to his testimony by showing that he has been previously convicted of a felony. That makes it delightfully simple for the police. They frame a charge on an ex-convict. If he sits silent the jury convicts him because he didn’t deny the charges that were made against him. If he takes the stand to declare his innocence, he becomes a “witness,” and the District Attorney smirkingly “impeaches” his testimony by showing that he’s been convicted of a felony. It’s a fine game, the law. And it’s played according to a complicated set of rules; but, as to me, those rules are all one way. Heads, the police win. Tails, I lose.

Bob Garret’s face drew even closer and another shower of cigar ashes sprinkled over my food.

“There are two gangs that need you here in the city. Both of ’em are in right. Both of ’em need a good box man. You’re it. You make your choice right here and now. Either you tie up with ’em and I get my split, or you wish you had.”

I motioned to the waiter.

“Bring me another order of chicken noodles as soon as this gentleman has finished with his cigar.”

Bob Garret sat back in his chair with a smile.

“Think you can get my goat, eh? All right. Now let me tell you something. Helen Chadwick’s on her way to jail.”

I had been half way expecting something like that, and I had nerved myself for it. I believe my face retained its expression without so much as a change of color.

“Who’s she? Someone I know?”

The detective gave a sneering laugh and I noticed that his eyes had dropped to my hands.

“Oh, yes,” he mocked. “Is she someone you know? That’s good,” and he pointed his finger.

I lowered my own eyes, looked at my hands. Unconsciously I had gripped my left hand, had bent one of the composition spoons almost double. Even now the skin showed white as paper across my knuckles.

“Now I’ll go on from there,” he gloated, fairly radiating confident assurance. “It happens we need you in our business. We never could get a strangle-hold on you until you and the skirt fell for each other. Then it was a cinch. She’s way up in society, one of the four hundred, but she hasn’t got any political influence. Her dad’s dead. Just her and her mother, and the old woman s not lastin’ long. She got mixed up with you just enough so we could prove that she knows you, that she posed as being engaged to you once, out at Loring Kemper’s. That’ll make a fine background for what we’re going to frame on her.”

I interrupted him. Knowing in advance that it was hopeless, I tried it, nevertheless.

“Leave her out of it. She never really cared for me, nor I for her. She was being blackmailed, and it would have killed her mother. I was able to help her out of it, and she had to pose as being engaged to me to trap the blackmailer. That’s all there was to that. She’s straight as a string. Leave her out of it.”

How he laughed, the sneering laugh of those who have power to control the destinies of others.

“Don’t make me laugh so hard, Jenkins. I got a sore lip. Sure, I know all about that end of the game, all about the blackmailing business. That don’t bother me. What I want is gravy, jack, mazuma. Get me? I want fifty per cent of the take, and when there ain’t any take there ain’t any fifty per cent. Get that? All right. I’ve never been able to control you before, but I can now. Helen Chadwick’s the weak link in your chain.

“No, don’t interrupt. Listen. Tonight Helen Chadwick is the guest of Paul Boardman and his wife. You know Boardman. He’s the real power behind the throne in city politics. Whenever he wants anything he gets it. Here’s something you don’t know. The Chief of Police is bucking Boardman, knows something about the inside of some of the deals. Boardman is in with the ring that gets the split on the gravy. I’m in with Boardman. Together we’re playing the cards to get the scalp of the Chief. I’m going in as the next Chief. It’s all slated.”

I looked at the man in surprise. Strive as I might to control my features, I could hardly keep my eyes from widening. Such information placed him in my power to some extent, even if I was a crook and he a police official. The Chief would probably credit the information if I should spill it to him. Garret must be crazy to tell me so much of the inside affairs of city politics.

He saw my expression and laughed outright, a gloating laugh of triumph. And then I knew. He felt he was safe in telling me anything he wanted to because I was not slated to leave that room alive unless I threw my lot in with his, be came a part of the criminal ring that was splitting the “gravy” fifty-fifty with the insiders.

“Don’t worry, Jenkins. You’ll never be able to use the information I’m giving you. Here’s some more. Helen Chadwick believes that Paul Boardman is framing a crime on you, that you’ve walked into the trap and are scheduled for the stir. But she also believes that the papers that’ll show your innocence are upstairs in Boardman’s open safe. Figure it out for yourself. She thinks the safe has been carelessly left open and that there’s a lock box in it that’ll keep you out of the pen. Good, eh?

“The trap’s all laid. When she walks up the stairs tonight she’ll be followed. Witnesses are planted in the room. The safe is coated with a special preparation that’ll hold her fingerprints like fresh varnish. In addition there’s a camera all set with a flashlight so that she’ll be photographed in front of the safe, rummaging through its contents.

“Come in with us and we split fifty-fifty. Stay out and you never leave here alive, and Helen Chadwick gets blackmailed out of everything she has in the world. That’s an argument you can’t overlook, a proposition you can’t say no to.”

He stopped talking and tossed his cigar into the spittoon. I knew that he meant every word he said. Some people might have questioned his ability to do what he threatened, might have thought he was outlining the plot of a ten-twenty-thirty melodrama. Those people are the theorists of life, the ones who sit back and make it possible for the crooked politicians to run a whole lot of the government. I’ve been through the police mill many times before. I know.

For a few moments I devoted my attention to breaking crackers into small pieces. I didn’t want Bob Garret to see my eyes. Right then I was wondering whether I could stop his scheme by killing him as he sat there at the table.

The China boy that was waiting on the table shuffled up with another order of food.

“Your fliend finish cigar,” he said, and deposited the fresh bowl of noodles.

A paper glinted between the yellow fingers on my side of the bowl, and I mechanically watched it as it dropped to the table, screened by the bowl from Garret’s eyes.

My fingers slipped it under the table, spread it out beneath the soiled cloth. My eyes soaked in the single line of the message:

There was no signature. A red blob of sealing wax, containing the imprint of a dragon, was in the lower right-hand corner. That was all.

I took out my watch. It was but a few minutes of ten.

“Well?” asked Bob Garret.

I stroked my chin meditatively.

“Let me think it over for a minute or two. Go on away from here and give me a chance to think.”

I could see swift suspicion in his countenance.

“I hate to get back into the crook game,” I continued, doubtfully, as though I were weakening.

He swung to my side of the table, patted swift hands over my clothes.

“They say you never carry a gun, Jenkins, but I’ll have to make sure.”

I sat still under the search, although the very touch of his hands fired me with an indignation which was more than mere hatred. I could understand how men killed. Damn him — the law had given him the right to paw me over, the right to arrest me on a felony charge if a weapon should be found. There was nothing for me but to submit to the majesty of the law.

Satisfied, he went away, joined the flat-foot at the other table, surveyed the restaurant in smirking arrogance. The three gunmen gave him a questioning glance. The pair of hard-boiled gangsters looked inquiringly at him. To both he nodded, a fatuous nod of complete assurance, yet motioned them to remain on guard.

I sighed and got my feet in under me. The time was at hand. It was possible that Bob Garret, whose eyes never left me, correctly interpreted my preparation for flight — for to stay and fight that crowd was madness. He jerked suddenly upright; perhaps gave a prearranged signal.

The three gunmen got into action first, one of them drew an ugly automatic. The other two had blackjacks. Over at the other table Bob Garret was hurriedly thrusting his pudgy hand beneath his coat. One of the plug-uglies grasped a chair.

It was Bob Garret that I watched. He alone knew how much I knew, how much he had told me. He would see to it that I never left the room alive. No sudden turn of fortune’s wheel could divert his mind from the main issue. I knew too much for him to allow me to live. He was too far away to enable me to come to close quarters before he could get his gun into action, yet near enough to be sure of his not missing.

Then suddenly, without a sound, came darkness, total darkness which seemed almost tangible in its velvety thickness.

“This way,” came a soft voice; and I sprang from the table, seeking the way I had determined upon.

I avoided both the front and the back entrances. I knew of a secret passageway which led out of one of the windows, on to a roof, to a hidden door, down a corridor and out through an adjoining store into one end of an alley.

A man got between me and my goal. I felt the quick intake of breath as a hand raised back, sensed rather than saw the poised knife, lurched forward with all my weight back of my fist, and hit a glancing blow on the man’s cheek. I could feel him reel sideways and backward under the blow.

From somewhere below came the shrill scream of a police whistle, and the cool night air struck my face as I leaned out of the window, rested my feet on the concealed support which had been cleated to the sheer side of the house, dropped to a roof below, ran along a little runway, through a door, down a narrow passageway and into a dark corridor.

I opened a door which led into the storeroom through which I had planned my exit, and, in the dim light, noticed a human form standing very erect at one side of the passageway. The events of the past few minutes had made me prone to act first and question afterward, and I braced my shoulder for a quick punch.

“Soo Hoo Duck wishes you good fortune in your quest,” came from the half darkness in the Cantonese dialect. “Water which has been dammed and then breaks through the obstruction carries all before it — but it must rush with great speed.”

So he knew then — this wily old Chink, knew that Yee Dooey Wah had been Ed Jenkins, knew that I had a mastery of the Cantonese dialect, and, apparently, knew something of the mission upon which I was embarking... also he had known that I was familiar with the secret passageway and surmised that I would be departing by that route.

Perhaps he was a friend, as he said. Perhaps he was a wily enemy, masking behind his apparent friendship a desire to place me in the hands of my enemies. At any rate I was not going to stop and argue the matter with him, any more than I was going to waste time returning his offers of good will. I swept past him like a limited train sweeping past a hobo.

“The alley exit is open and unwatched,” I heard him say as I dashed through the back of the store and into another corridor.

I had expected there would be a hue and cry behind me in the store, that the Chinese would raise a commotion, put the police on my track, give the gunmen a chance to learn which way I had taken in making my escape; but they looked at me with beady-eyed impassivity, and went on with their unhurried tasks. Perhaps they had been instructed to expect me, to keep silent as I went through the store. Perhaps I was walking out of one trap and into another.

I had no chance to change my plans. It was the alley exit or the street, and to have emerged upon the lighted street would have been to offer myself as a gratuitous target for the men of the underworld, as a certain captive to the police. And the end would have been the same in either event. I was supposed to either join forces with the underworld on a fifty-fifty split with the police, or to become a corpse. There was no room in their plans for anything different. If I didn’t join them they intended to blackmail Helen Chadwick, and they knew that they would never be safe in doing so as long as I was alive.

I hit the darkness of the alley, thought for a moment it was deserted, and then saw that a roadster was parked directly across from the door through which I had emerged.

Another door opened. I heard the soft sibilants of a Chinaman’s voice dropped to a cautious whisper:

“Takee car; send um back some day.”

I sprinted through the gloom, vaulted into the seat, groped for the ignition switch, and found the keys in the lock.

I pressed the starting motor, threw in the clutch and tore out of the alley just as there came the sound of a whining siren and a police machine ground to a stop around the corner, at the door of the Mandarin Café.

And I saw something else in that brief glimpse I had of the street. A “dead wagon” was parked at the curb, one of those black, box-like affairs in which corpses are transported. On the driver’s seat, attired in sombre black, sat the vulture, the human buzzard, his head bent over, his nose twitching, his long neck twisting in his collar.

Only a flashing glimpse did I have and then I had skidded the corner and was tearing through the narrow streets, gripping the wheel, pressing the foot throttle to the floor boards.

Some time later I swung the car into a darkened street and slammed on the brakes.

I slipped from the car, sprinted to the curb, dashed through the revolving door of a hotel, walked rapidly across the lobby, took an elevator to the second floor, walked down the corridor, sprinted down the steps, went to the side entrance of the hotel and stepped into a taxicab.

“University Club,” I snapped at the driver.

I went there, entered the club, came out and into another cab, and went to the Coliseum Theatre. That was only four blocks from where Paul Boardman lived, and I didn’t want to be traced too near the house.

For once I was doing but little planning. Action was my cue that night. On other occasions I had had the time to think out some careful plan of campaign, to match plot with counter-plot, and always had I kept my back trail so covered that it would be difficult to pin a definite infraction of the law upon me. Now it was different. I was working against time and for the safety of the woman I loved.

Such are the methods by which the police grind down the criminal. One dare not have a companionship with a woman, a love for one of the opposite sex. Such things are tabulated at “headquarters” and whenever the police want a man they look for the woman for whom he has shown a fondness. If they can find him through her well and good. If they cannot, they proceed to hound her day and night, making life miserable for her. Wherever they have the opportunity, they haul her on the carpet, until, in desperation, the man for whom they are looking tries to protect the girl he loves — and walks into a carefully spread police net.

One who would be at war with society must renounce all normal companionship, must have no friendship, must learn to be self-sustaining. And I, for years a lone wolf and proud of the fact, had at last walked into the most common police trap of them all, the one which never fails, the inherent desire of a man to protect the woman he loves.

There were lights in the front of the Boardman house, but the back was dark. I presumed that Bob Garret had already arrived. I felt certain that he was to be one of the witnesses who would trap Helen Chadwick when she went to the safe for the papers, and I never doubted for a minute but that she would go to that safe.

What her feelings for me were I had no means of knowing. This much I did know. Any affection she might have for me could be nothing but a source of pain. Therefore, if I were to act the part of a gentleman, I must conceal my feelings for her, never by word or act cause her friendship to ripen into anything else. The present situation was but a sample of what she might expect if she should show a fondness for me.

For the moment I had the wild idea of storming the front of the house, of demanding to see Helen Chadwick, and warning her, but a second thought convinced me of the futility of such a course. Beyond question Bob Garret would have hastened to the house and prepared for just that. Knowing that I had escaped from the death trap set for me in the Chinese café, knowing that I possessed the knowledge of what was to happen in that house, he could figure out my next move with no uncertainty. He knew what I would try to do as well as though I had told him my plans.

So much had the love of a good woman and this cursed police system done for me. I had ceased to be able to master events, and must, in turn, be mastered by events, not of my own making. I had become merely a pawn. The police had set the trap, had baited it with the one bait I could not resist, and, no matter that I had fought my way to freedom through the smelly darkness of Chinatown, I must throw away that freedom, rush madly to the one place where the police would be expecting me.

And yet I had one ace up my sleeve. I had my years of experience. I was no novice at the game. I had been in tight places before. I had learned the logic of doing the unexpected.

Had I called at the front door I would have been swiftly and quietly overpowered, arrested, started for the jail, and killed en route while “attempting to escape.” Had I sought to get Helen Chadwick on the telephone, I would have been kept waiting while the police traced the call and arrested me.

As it was, I violated the law, broke and entered, and I did it without compunction. There was an ingenious burglar alarm, but I had learned my trade thoroughly, and it did not detain me long. One of the back windows slid noiselessly upward, and I dropped into the yawning blackness within.

A phonograph was blaring forth a dance piece from the front of the house. There was the occasional shrill of woman’s laughter. Now and then there came a deep guffaw from a man. Evidently there were several guests, guests who could be called as “witnesses” if the occasion demanded. And I felt certain that things had been arranged so that Helen would be making her attempt almost immediately, might be sneaking up the stairs and into Boardman’s study even now. Knowing me as they did, the plotters could not help but fear me. Now that I had escaped from Chinatown, they would take elaborate plans to keep me from reaching Helen with a warning, but the best plan of all would be to have her walk into the trap without delay.

There were back stairs in the house, but here I was doomed to disappointment. Such servants as were on duty were gathered in the little hallway at the foot of those stairs. The front stairs would doubtless be near the front door, and they would be guarded.

I had no time to lay plans, no time to do much of any thinking. It was merely a case of doing the unexpected wherever possible and doing it rapidly.

A serving tray loaded with glasses of gin stood on a little table in the pantry and I picked this up, ditched my hat, and started boldly to the front part of the house, toward the noise of revelry. The tray was balanced on my hand, held so that it concealed my face as much as was possible. It was a desperate chance, but one I must take. They might arrest me, might recognize me as soon as I entered the rooms where the guests were gathered, but they would never be able to subdue me until I had raised such a commotion that Helen would be warned. After that, it would be prison of course, for I had broken and entered another man’s house...

I kicked open a swinging door. Couples were dancing over a floor from which rugs had been removed. The lights were low during the dance, and the swaying couples seemed engrossed in each other. The casual sight of a man carrying a tray of glasses did not arouse sufficient interest to cause either male or female to give a second glance at the supposed servant.

Fortune was favoring me. She had favored me in the matter of the lights, and she was favoring me as to the stairs. The front stairs forked at a landing, and one flight came down into the very room where the dancing was taking place.

Twisting and turning through the twining couples, I slowly made my way to the stairs and up, carrying the glasses upon the tray. There was no one to question, no one to comment.

On the landing I set down the tray and dashed upward into the darkened upper story. It would suit their purpose to have it dark here. The trap for Helen Chadwick required darkness. There would be concealed witnesses, a camera set up, with a flashlight all ready. When Helen approached the safe she would touch a string which would click the shutter and release a flash just as wild deer are made to photograph themselves when they approach a salt lick at night.

I knew, from what Bob Garret had told me, that the study was on the upper floor. As to its exact location I could have no definite idea. Also I could appreciate the danger. There were witnesses in the upper story of that house, witnesses who were planted there, ready to pounce upon Helen Chadwick as she advanced to the safe. If I were to explore at random I would be almost certain to stumble upon some of these people.

I determined to play one hunch, and then, if I was not successful in that, to call Helen Chadwick’s name at the top of my voice, to shout my warning there in the darkness of the upper hallway.

There was but one chance I could take, first, — that I could pick the room in which the study was located. If I could do that, if I could enter that darkened room and do something that would spring the carefully set trap before the victim had walked into it, then I might be able to escape without divulging my identity. They would know all right, but they wouldn’t have proof, and it takes some sort of proof to convict.

Paul Boardman was one of these high and mighty humans who court the limelight. I could rest assured that he would have picked the best room on the upper floor as his study. That would be one of the rooms in the front, one of the corner rooms. There were two doors either of which might lead to the room I sought.

Noiselessly I opened the one on the left which was nearer to me. This was one night when I was working rapidly, trusting to luck — and to speed.

A wall of darkness loomed back of the door. There had been a faint, reflected light in the hallway, but once within the room I might have been on the inside of a pocket, at the bottom of a deep shaft. The darkness was total, a thick syrupy darkness which seemed almost to stick to the skin.

I dared not risk my pocket flash. Nor was there any use in waiting for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. There was not enough light to enable my eyes to register anything had I remained in the room for a month.

I stretched my hands out before me, sought to feel my way with the tips of my fingers, and went ahead slowly. Somewhere within me there was a subtle something which told me the room was occupied. I could almost feel the hostile magnetism of crouching enemies.

My hand touched something cold and smooth, explored along it, identified it as the rounding edge of a bathtub. I was in a bathroom then. My quest was futile. It was the wrong room after all, and yet I could have sworn that there were other human beings within a few feet of me, human beings who were sitting tensed, ready, hostile.

For a moment I stood poised, puzzled, and then, with no warning whatever, there came a terrific flash of blinding, white light. In that flash my eyes caught and held a picture.

Before me was rigged a camera on a tripod. A flash-pan stood slightly to the rear and on one side. Just in front of the camera crouched two men, stooped over so as to be out of the field of the lense. I was standing in a bathroom which opened from the hall, and which, in turn, opened into the room that Paul Boardman had fitted as a study, a home office. Before the safe in that room, exploring cautiously, with groping fingers outspread, was the form of Helen Chadwick.

So instantaneous had been the explosion of the flash powder that I saw her as absolutely stationary, held motionless as a marble statue in the green glare of a lightning flash.

And then there came the stabbing beam of a flashlight, seeming pitifully weak after the dazzling glare of the brilliant flash powder.

“Throw up your hands!”

It was the voice of Bob Garret, and it confirmed my suspicions, showed me that he had played the game as I had figured he would play it, had rushed back from the Chinese café to speed up the conspiracy. The other man then would be Paul Boardman and they would be the only witnesses, just these two. They would rely upon their testimony, upon the fingerprints on the safe, upon the evidence of the flashlight photograph.

Garret spoke again, and his voice quavered with excitement and triumph.

“Caught with the goods. Your fingerprints are on the safe, and your picture is registered on the plate. Also there are two witnesses. Attempted burglary of the first degree.”

The light played full upon the features of Helen Chadwick, and those features were as calm as though Bob Garret had merely been discussing the weather forecast.

“And what is it you want me to do?” she asked.

Bob Garret thought that she had yielded, that she had placed herself entirely in his power. I could hear the triumph of his voice as he advanced toward her.

“We want your signature to this written confession first. After that, we want you to see that Ed Jenkins is caught red-handed. We have a little trap for him, too.”

Helen laughed, a short, curt laugh that had a cutting ring to it.

“What do you offer me in return?”

It was Paul Boardman’s heavy voice that answered her.

“We offer you immunity from prosecution, offer you the chance to keep your family name untarnished, to keep from your mother the shock that would send her to the grave.”

He spoke with the booming voice of an orator, made his appeal in the dramatic terms of a vote getter, a stump speaker.

Knowing and loving her as I did, I could see her wince, but I doubt if either one of those men detected the slight change in her facial expression. She was more of a thoroughbred than they were accustomed to deal with, and her emotions were foreign to their type, yet they knew the arguments to use to move her.

“I came here to get some evidence that showed that a crime had been framed on Ed Jenkins,” she admitted frankly, with the ghost of a pathetic smile twisting her lips. “I would hardly turn around and offer to surrender him into a trap that you were to set.”

It was Bob Garret who poured forth a torrent of oily words, seeking to convince her that she was acting for her best interests and was not hurting mine.

“We only want to get some influence to bear on Jenkins,” he said. “He’s an obstinate chap, and we want to get him where he will listen to reason.”

She hesitated, turning something over in her mind and Garret waved the paper before her.

“Go ahead and sign.”

“You won’t use this against me in any way? Won’t try to blackmail me with it. Won’t threaten to show it to my mother afterward?”

I could hardly believe my ears. Could it be possible that she trusted them? She had expressed in words the very thoughts they had in mind.

They were both ready liars, and they chimed their denials in a chorus. It was as though each hesitated to trust to the extemporaneous prevarications of the other.

“No, no, nothing of the sort. Certainly not.”

The deep voice of Boardman chimed in with the oily tones of Garret.

“One more question,” said Helen, pushing back the paper, “you’re sure that you don’t mean any harm to Ed Jenkins?”

Again they lied in chorus.

“What is it you want him to do?”

This time there was a second or two of uncomfortable silence. Bob Garret could hardly think of a proper answer, and he left the verbal lead for his partner.

“Miss Chadwick, surely you know me, you know that I wouldn’t be mixed up in anything crooked?”

Paul Boardman waited a moment for her assurance of confidence, and, failing to get it, hurried on in his talk a little more rapidly, and with somewhat less confidence.

“I have some things I want Ed Jenkins to do for me, both for me and for Bob Garret here. Surely we wouldn’t want anything that wasn’t entirely all right, and we control the police politics of the city. Ed couldn’t do better for himself than to place himself in our hands. But he’s obstinate. He insists on having his own way, being a Lone Wolf, and we’ve got to have some little argument that will persuade him, win him over.”

Her voice was soft, almost devoid of expression.

“You wanted him to help you in the opening of safes? Or did you want him to work in with a gang and split the loot?”

They denied this in unison again. It would never do for them to admit their plans to Helen Chadwick.

She listened to their almost hysterical denials, and then laughed, a harsh, grating, metallic laugh.

“I’m sorry that I was so simple as to walk into your trap,” she said, “but it grieves me to see how simple you really think I am. Perhaps you can send me to the penitentiary, perhaps not, but I’d sooner cut off my right hand and go to jail for life than to sign a paper that would put Ed Jenkins back into criminal life. I’ve been working to get his record straightened out, to show the governors of the other states where he is wanted that he wasn’t guilty of the crimes that were laid to his door, that whatever he actually did was the result of the circumstances in which he found himself placed.”

Boardman wanted to argue still.

“Think of yourself, of your mother. I’m a hard man to cross. I’m loyal to my friends and bitter to my enemies. You have invaded the privacy of my study with felonious intentions. Your own admission shows that you came after certain private political papers, and the flashlight photograph shows that you were actually removing certain contents from my safe.

“You were up here this afternoon with my wife, and you particularly noticed the location of the safe so that you might be able to come back again tonight and remove the papers in the dark. You were afraid to use a light, and you thought you could get the proper paper in the dark. The party who told you of it told you it was in a small, flat, tin box. The photograph will show you actually touching that box, and the box will bear the imprint of your fingers.

“There will be no question of what any jury will do. Think of the horror of being confined within the cold, gray walls of San Quentin. Think of the shock to your mother...”

She interrupted him and every word snapped and stung like the lash of a whip.

“So you had it all framed, you cur. You capitalized on my desire to see Ed Jenkins rehabilitated. It was all a frame-up from the first. Do you think you can get away with that? Why Ed Jenkins would kill you. The city isn’t big enough for you to escape him. And don’t forget that I’m no common crook to be framed and bluffed. I can and will fight. Don’t think I didn’t have the woman shadowed who gave me the fake tip about these papers. My detectives can locate her at will, and she’ll have something to say when she gets on the witness stand, or before the grand jury.

“It’s a good thing for you that Ed Jenkins doesn’t know what’s going on here tonight — and he probably never will know unless you press things. But God help you if he does!”

Her words disconcerted them. Perhaps it was a bluff about having their tool shadowed. Perhaps she had been shrewd enough to do it. And there was truth in what she said about her ability to fight the case. They had counted upon a woman who would go into hysterics, who would lose her head, beg, plead. Hence the written confession. They would stampede her into signing that first, and then anything she could say afterward would sound like an alibi thought out by a desperate criminal lawyer.

Bob Garret lost his head and rushed forward, grabbing her by the arm.

“Sign, you fool! Sign! Hear the police on the stairs?”

And he was right. He had evidently given some signal and now there sounded the shuffling of heavy feet on the stairs. The police were to enter and catch her before the safe.

But I had not been idle while they were talking.

The beam from the pocket flash lamp showed me other things besides the face of Helen Chadwick. There was the camera, the flashlight stand, a bottle of flash powder setting near to it. The photograph was still on the plate in the camera, and it was their most clinching piece of evidence. With that gone, they would hardly dare to prosecute. Paul Boardman had influence with the city government. He controlled judges by the dozen. The district attorney did as Boardman bade, but there was such a thing as going too far. If they should run into just the right sort of a fight before a jury the whole political house of cards would collapse.

It was a double plate-holder, and I worked with noiseless rapidity. The camera had been set in the bathroom to give the lense a wider field. The shutter was automatic, and the camera focused upon the safe.

I had slipped the slide in the exposed plate, turned the plate-holder, removed the slide, slipped a fresh charge of flash powder into the “gun.” All of this I had done while they had been talking.

As there sounded a heavy knock at the door of the study, as the two men pushed against Helen Chadwick, threatening — holding out to her paper and pen, showing by their every attitude, their facial expressions, their gestures, that they were trying to force her to sign this paper against her will, I tripped the shutter and pulled the cord of the flash gun.

The explosion burnt the eyelashes from my face, singed my hair. It was too close quarters for accurate work, and I was hurried.

That second glare of light caught them as much by surprise as the first had caught Helen. They stopped in their tracks. Their faces blanched, and Garret dropped his hand-lamp to reach for his gun.

I slipped the slide back into the plate-holder, removed it from the camera, stuck the holder containing both exposed plates under my arm, and was on my way.

Even as I dashed from the bathroom door into the hallway, I had the nucleus of an idea in the back of my mind. In the old days when I had earned my title of “The Phantom Crook” I had always worked on the theory that the police are methodical but not brilliant. They are slow, sure plodders. Given a situation which has become standard, they operate with remarkable efficiency. Place them up against new conditions, however, conditions which change with the speed of thought, and they are hopelessly outclassed. It was up to me to do the unexpected and watch for the breaks.

There were some four or five policemen in the corridor, and all of them were massed about the door which went directly into the study. They had evidently been carefully instructed in the parts they were to play. They were prepared to walk into the room, representing the stem majesty of the law, and bully a helpless girl.

They looked at my back in dazed amazement during that short, split-fraction of a second that it took me to negotiate the distance between the bathroom door and the head of the stairs.

Then the other door jerked open and Boardman and Garret made a leap into the hall, only to become entangled with the waiting officers. There was the usual snarl of arms and legs, the usual commotion of shouted commands, explanations, impatient orders. I didn’t wait to see it, but I could hear it, and I knew from past experiences what was taking place. The police had watched me as I dashed down the stairs, their minds functioning slowly. By the time Boardman and Garret had started in pursuit the officers had half a mind that they should have tried to stop me. As a result they automatically stopped my pursuers. Then there were recriminations, orders, confusion, noise, and all of the time the minds of the cops were attempting to adjust themselves to the new developments.

Finally they all wound up by pounding in pursuit, their steps banging in haste down the stairs while the servants and guests ran and screamed. This was exactly the break I had been counting upon. I made but little noise as I ran, and attracted almost no attention compared to the sounds of the stampede from the hallway above.

I ducked back of a curtain while the guests scuttled for cover and the servants rushed hither and thither trying to find out what it was all about. When the servants had vacated the little hallway at the foot of the back stairs, I slipped out from behind my curtain, took the back stairs two at a time in a swift series of noiseless, springing strides, and found the upper corridor deserted, just as I had figured it would be.

Even Helen Chadwick had left the study. She stood at the head of the stairs, looking after the officers as they stormed into the lower hallway, and wasted their time in fruitless questions, contradictory orders.

Silently I slipped into the study and over to the safe. The lights had been turned on now, and the room blazed with incandescent brilliance. The safe, as I had expected would be the case, was coated with some sticky, varnishlike preparation which would register the imprint of any finger upon it. There was a small metal lock box which was also covered with a similar coating.

I had only time for a brief survey, and then I heard the sound of voices, footsteps on the stairs, the booming voice of Paul Boardman raised in a very ecstasy of irritation.

They were coming back.

There was a closet back of the safe and I dived into this. The place was filled with books, papers, old clothes, junk.

I picked a hiding place back of the old clothes, and placed the plate-holder on the floor, under my heel. In the event I was discovered I could merely place my weight upon it and shatter the plates into a thousand fragments. And yet I felt that I would not be discovered. They would never expect that a fugitive would make his escape only to return and conceal himself in the very place from which he had escaped. Almost all of my sensational escapes had been predicated upon doing the thing which was the most illogical for a man in my position to do, yet which, by reason of that very fact, actually became the most logical.

I could hear Bob Garret’s voice running along in a continued stream of babbling conversation. Apparently he feared that Boardman would blame him for the miscarriage of the plan by which Helen Chadwick was to be trapped — and he didn’t know the half of it yet.

Boardman seemed to pay no attention to the string of alibis which Garret was pouring forth. His voice interrupted the stream of conversation.

“Never mind all that. Get the exposed plate out of the camera. Then find out what that second flash was about. How did it happen?”

Together they went over to the camera. Bit by bit the situation dawned on them.

“I had the lense stopped way down, and used a very powerful flash, that’ll give sharp detail.”

It was Garret speaking, his words an oral smirk of supreme self-satisfaction.

“Well, where is the plate?” asked Boardman.

There was a period of silence.

“Good God!” exclaimed Garret.

“You mean it’s gone?”

“Worse than that... Someone apparently reversed the plate and set off another flashlight, then took both plates. You see there were two plates in the holder, one in each side...”

Boardman finished the sentence.

“And that means Ed Jenkins has a picture of us struggling with this girl before the safe, trying to get her to sign that paper.”

There was no further conversation for a moment or two. Each of the men was busy with his own thoughts, thinking just what it would mean to him if that picture should be released at just the proper time.

The silence was broken by Helen Chadwick’s voice, and in it there was a happy, triumphant lilt which somehow seemed much more than mere relief. It was as though I had somehow vindicated her faith in me, and had placed her in a position to show these men that her faith had been justified.

“I knew that Ed Jenkins wouldn’t let you frame anything like that on me. You men are lucky to have escaped so easily.”

It was undoubtedly the way the kid felt, but there wasn’t anything she could have said that would have been more like dumping emotional gasoline on the smouldering fires of their wrath.

Boardman answered her, and his voice quavered with fury.

“You and your crook, Ed Jenkins! Who do you think you are? Before another twenty-four hours have passed, Ed Jenkins will be dead, either killed outright, or in jail with a charge framed against him that he’ll never be able to explain away. D’you think any man can come in here and pull anything like that and get away with it?

“And as for you — don’t forget that you’re going to face this thing alone. Ed Jenkins won’t be able to help you. We haven’t the photograph, but we still have our testimony and the fingerprints you’ve left on the safe and on the box that was within that safe. It’ll take that precious crook of yours a long time to think up some nice, plausible explanation about how your fingerprints happened to be on that safe.”

Because of the silence that followed I could tell that Helen Chadwick realized her mistake in seeking to rub it in on these two political crooks. The political crook has forgotten more about double dealing and general crookedness than the average yeggman or gangster ever learns. Yet it would have been the same in any event. They would have reached the same conclusion themselves, even if Helen Chadwick hadn’t spoken. It was a cinch that I had been the one to take that second flashlight, to remove that plate-holder, and with what I knew, and the photographic evidence I had, it would be unsafe for these men to allow me to live. Word would go out into the highways and byways of crime. Every crooked cop on the force would receive whispered instructions. Every stool-pigeon would start out with a new hope, a new lease on life, a fresh supply of police-furnished dope. The word would spread like wild fire.

Ed Jenkins must die.

How the news would trickle through the sub-strata of society! Cops would know that I was to be arrested, and that I was to be killed while “resisting arrest.” Every gangster would know that should he be the one to speed the fatal bullet he could write a ticket of immunity from prosecution until he cleaned up his pile. Every stoolie would know the most valued information that could be given to the police.

Bob Garret was in virtual control of the police.

Paul Boardman was in virtual control of the city.

These two had willed that I should die, and many and varied would be the instrumentalities that would bow to their will.

Boardman spoke in a low tone.

“Get her fingerprints, Bob, and turn her loose. She can’t run away, and she won’t dare to talk.”

Garret had a worried note in his voice.

“We don’t even need her fingerprints. It’ll look better if we haven’t got ’em. The prints are on the safe, and she can’t ever change her fingertips. If we decide to have her arrested we’ll throw her in, tell our story, and then let the fingerprint men examine the safe. We’ll pretend we don’t even know there’s a fingerprint there. But we’ve got to be careful. She’s our hold on Ed Jenkins, and he knows too damned much to live. If we can’t get him any other way we can always get him through her.”

I could hear the throaty rumble with which Boardman growled his assent.

There was a rustling from without, a rustling which signified the motion of human bodies. Apparently they had left the police outside, such as had not started out to scour the neighborhood for me. They had taken the girl back in the room with them, seeking to browbeat her once more into submission, and then the discovery of the stolen plate-holder had made them realize just how precarious their own position was. That second photograph meant disaster to them. If that photograph should find its way into the hands of the Chief, for instance — if it should suddenly appear in one of the hostile papers— Oh, they had their hands full of their own affairs right now.

“I have it!”

It was Garret’s voice again, and there was a note of confident triumph in it. Crouched there in the dark stuffiness of the closet, I wondered what had happened. I had heard nothing but the faint rustlings of moving bodies. For a moment I wondered if Helen Chadwick had suddenly thrown a gun down on them, if she had some wild idea of arresting them, some hope that it would be possible to start the ordinary machinery of justice grinding in the case of a man of such political influence as Paul Boardman. For a second I was almost in a panic. Green in the ways of politics, knowing nothing of the extent of civic depravity which exists in so many of our cities, the kid might have thought she could find some channel of justice which would lend an ear to her story.

“Get her out of here. Send her home. We’ve got the trumps in our hand after all. It’s simple.”

Bob Garret could hardly speak without stuttering, so eager was he to get the words out. His voice rose to a shrill pitch which was almost hysterical. “Get her away. Have the police take her home. Jenkins will be dead before morning!”

“Are you crazy?” It was Boardman’s rumble. “Jenkins has shown he can outwit you at any stage of the game. We may get him, but it’ll be a long, hard chase.”

I could hear Bob Garret’s feet as they pattered on the floor. So eager was he, so excited, that he could hardly contain himself.

“I tell you I’ve got it. It’s simple, too. It’s the very simplicity of the thing that makes it so certain. We’ve got the trumps in our hands and we’ve been so foolish we haven’t realized it. Send the girl home, and be sure we keep a police guard about her house. Don’t let her get out.”

Boardman was getting interested.

“Shall we have her telephone disconnected?”

“No. No. Listen, and do as I say. When you hear what I’ve got on my chest you’ll see I’m right... Here, wait a minute...”

There was tense silence for a moment, and then I heard Garret’s voice shrilling a number into the telephone. I had noticed the instrument which set on the study desk, and I recognized the number as police headquarters.

Garret got the photographic department, left instructions that a man was to be sent the first thing in the morning to photograph the fingerprints on the safe, then slammed the receiver back on the hook.

Something in his manner had convinced Boardman, for I could hear them escorting the girl to the door, instructing the policeman who waited without to see that she went to her house and did not leave.

Within the closet I tensed my muscles, made sure my heel was on the plate-holder.

Probably Garret had reasoned it out that I was hiding some place in the building. If so, I would have to give him credit for more intelligence than I had originally figured. Perhaps he knew that I was hiding in the closet. Then there would be but one thing for me to do, to smash the plate and fight it out, trying to rush them before they could gather their forces.

They dared not let the police in to hear any conversation which might take place between us. No. Their play would be to enter the closet with drawn weapons and riddle me with bullets before I could say a word. They could always square themselves before the public. After all, I was a known crook. If they should find me in the closet, what more natural than that I should resist arrest, perhaps try to kill them? They could concoct a pretty story, all right.

Very well, I would go close to the closet door. If they came to it I would meet them more than half way. They would find no cringing, crouching figure hiding behind the clothes, a man whom they could shoot down with impunity. They would find me charging forth to meet them, and, if I could possess myself of one of their weapons... well, we would wait and see. They had me in a corner, and the happiness of Helen Chadwick was at stake. I could fancy no more sacred altar upon which to sacrifice my life.

The door into the hall closed.

I could hear the rasp of the key in the lock.

Upon the stairs sounded the descending heavy tread of the policeman, the light steps of Helen Chadwick.

Within the room I could hear the two men approach the closet door, and I lowered my shoulders, took a deep breath... and then I relaxed.

They were not coming to the door. Garret was speaking, the words fairly tumbling out of his mouth.

“Can’t you see it? He’s protecting her. He must have been concealed in the bathroom all of the time. He knows of the fingerprints on the safe. He stole the plate, took another one of us — but he’s not after us. He’s trying to protect the girl. He’s bound to get in touch with her tonight. Probably he’ll use the telephone. She’ll tell him we’re going to photograph the fingerprints in the morning... But he won’t even need to telephone her. He’s a clever crook, and he knows of those fingerprints. He’ll figure we’ll wait for daylight. I tell you, Boardman, it’s a cinch. Ed Jenkins is going to return to this safe tonight. He’ll come back to remove those fingerprints. Some time tonight he’s going to come through that door!”

There was silence for a moment.

After all, Garret had doped things out right. He should have carried his reasoning a step farther and known that I had never left the house. For a moment I tensed myself with apprehension. Perhaps Boardman would begin where Garret had left off and make the logical deduction. If so, he would know that I would never have fled from the house while there remained those fingerprints on the safe. Regardless of the cost to myself, I would have removed that evidence.

But Boardman was so swept away with Garret’s idea that he failed to add to it.

“Great smoke, Garret, you’re right!”

“Sure I’m right. I know him and I know his type. It’s only for us to arrange to kill him when he comes back.”

Boardman rumbled in his throat.

“Wait a minute. I’ve got an idea to add to yours,” he said, and then became silent.

Once more I listened in an agony of apprehension, wondering whether they would figure out the real situation. They were on the very threshold of the correct conclusion. It only remained for them to add the two and two and get the four.

And then Boardman’s heavy chuckle sounded to me in the darkness of the closet.

“Well?”

There was a note of impatience in Garret’s voice.

“Just leave the front door open when you go out,” boomed Boardman. “Jenkins will be watching the house, waiting for you to go. You can walk as though you were wrapped up in thought, and leave the front door open. We’ll nail up the door through the bathroom and nail the window shut. That’ll leave just one entrance for Jenkins to use in coming into this room. That entrance’ll be the door into the hall, and we’ll leave that door partially open.”

“Well, I still don’t see what you’re driving at.”

Again Boardman chuckled, and there was something in the supreme self-satisfaction of that chuckle that made me long to get my hands on his throat.

“I’ll arrange a gun in the hall, a shotgun. It’ll be up out of the way, and there’ll be a fine wire stretched across the door, stretched back and forth, up and down. When anyone tries to go through that door there’ll be a charge of buckshot sprayed into him.

“That’ll simplify matters. You go home and I’ll go to bed. We’ll say we left this man-trap because we knew a desperate criminal was seeking to murder me, and that this criminal expected I would be sleeping in the study.”

“It’ll be a cinch. No one can accuse us of framing Ed Jenkins and killing him. He’ll be killed while he’s walking into my house in the dead of night, apparently seeking to murder me because I caught Helen Chadwick trying to get into my safe. It’s an iron-clad idea.”

I heard Garret’s hand whacked down on Boardman’s shoulders.

There followed excited whispers, surreptitious chuckles, the scraping of chairs. Then, after a bit, there came the sound of pounding, as nails were driven home.

After that I heard them checking things over. It had taken them more than an hour to rig the death trap to their liking, and they had been painfully careful in the construction of each detail. They both knew that their safety depended upon my death, and they knew that I was bound to return to that room, sooner or later. Now that the idea had occurred to them, they realized that I would attempt the removal of those damning fingerprints from the safe before morning.

At length the light switch clicked off, and I could hear their voices from the hallway as they put the finishing touches upon the death trap. Then there sounded steps on the stairs, a door slammed, and the house became silent.

I waited an hour and then slipped stealthily out of the room. I dared not press the light switch, but relied upon my pocketflash, and I kept the beam of that shaded as far as possible.

A hurried survey showed that I was in a veritable death trap. The bathroom door was nailed shut, nailed from the outside. The window was nailed down and it would take considerable time to remove the nails, and the removal would be accompanied with as much noise as though I shattered the glass. Nor did the window offer any great hope of escape. It had been nailed shut to prevent my placing a ladder against the side of the house and entering by that manner. There was a sheer drop of some thirty feet from that window, and a cement courtyard loomed beneath.

As for the door into the hallway, it stood invitingly open, and it was a veritable door of death. In constructing their death trap they had done a better job than they knew at the time. Not only would it be impossible to get in that door without springing the trap, but it would be impossible to get out. They had used a fine wire, and the slightest touch upon that wire would discharge the hair-trigger shotgun which was so placed as to spray the entire door with buckshot — and that gun was out in the hall.

In building a death trap to kill Ed Jenkins when he came into the room, they had unwittingly constructed a trap which would kill him when he tried to leave the room.

I completed my inspection, shrugged my shoulders, and turned to the safe. With the blade of my knife I scraped the surface free of every fingerprint. The small box I treated the same way, and then, lest there should be anything I had missed, I rubbed both the safe and the box thoroughly with my pocket-handkerchief.

That much was finished. I had completed the task which they knew I must accomplish, which they had determined should mean my death.

Then I turned to the trap once more, and, as I studied it, my rage mounted against the human fiends who had sought to frame a crime on Helen Chadwick, and had willed that I should die when I tried to rescue her from their clutches. I determined that these men should not escape punishment. True, they were clothed with power, shielded by the so-called majesty of the law, while I was a crook, an outlaw who was frowned down by society. A jury or a judge would laugh me out of court if I should use the channels of justice to redress my wrongs. A crook seek the protection of the law? The very idea was ludicrous. Who would believe my testimony? I would be a joke. The newspapers would feature me as the prize comedian of the day.

No. It was up to me to handle my own justice, to be my own court, my own judge, jury, executioner.

I stepped to the desk, looked up the residence number of Bob Garret, and breathed the number into the instrument.

I could tell from the sound of the detective’s voice that he had not been asleep. He had been waiting, waiting for news of his trap.

One of the most valuable gifts which I have received from nature has been a natural talent for mimicry. Let me hear a voice once or twice and I can imitate it after a fashion, imitate it well enough to get by under favorable circumstances. And the booming voice of Paul Boardman was an easy one to mimic, particularly when that voice would naturally be blurred with excitement.

“Quick, Bob. He came in, walked into the trap and is dead as a mackerel. Get the police and then hurry over, help me see it through.”

“It worked then!” shrieked Garret into the telephone. “I tell you, Boardman, I feared that crook. There was something almost supernatural about his abilities.”

“Yeah,” I growled in my best imitation of Boardman’s heavy accents. “Well, you don’t need to fear him now. He’s croaked right. But hurry over here. I’m up in the study and I’ve kept the servants out of it. You’ll find the whole place quiet. I’m a bit nervous about the police — the Chief, you know. Telephone for a squad, and then hurry on. Come right into the study as soon as you get here.”

Garret laughed.

“Say, to hell with the Chief. And why should the police worry you? You were within your rights, a crook in your own house, you know. Buck up. This strain’s got you unnerved. I couldn’t sleep myself. I’m coming right over. You’re in the study now?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I’m using the study phone. Hurry!” and hung up.

For perhaps fifteen minutes I sat there in the darkness, the plate-holder with its precious contents buttoned under my coat. Almost anything might happen now, and, as far as possible, I was ready for anything that could happen. There could be no escape from that room until those slender wires across the door had been broken. So ingeniously were they arranged that even the slight pull a man would make on them in trying to break or cut them would discharge the gun. I could only sit within that death trap and wait.

There sounded the rapid throb of a motor. Tires screeched across the pavement as a machine skidded to a stop. Steps dashed up to the front door, and then, more cautiously, I could hear the tread of feet on the front stairs, down the corridor.

“Boardman?”

There was almost suspicion in the voice as Garret paused before the dark doorway.

“Come in, Bob,” I boomed, imitating Boardman’s heavy voice. “Don’t touch the light. I’m watching a shadow who’s hiding over behind the hedge. Come over here and peek out the window.”

Garret didn’t even hesitate. He was so relieved to think Ed Jenkins was dead that he could hardly speak.

“We’ll get him, too. Say, I’m glad we got Ed Jenkins. I somehow had a hunch he’d get me....”

The rest of the sentence was lost forever.

There was a double, spitting stream of ruddy, stabbing flame, a terrific roar — and a body pitched heavily to the floor.

I ducked back into the closet, as running steps sounded from the corridor below. An electric flashlight shot upon the sprawled, twitching body, and then Boardman was in the room, chuckling.

He turned on the lights.

“Got him, by George! Got the Phantom Crook at last...”

His deep voice trailed off into a throaty gurgle. I could hear him gasp, stagger over to the form on the floor and then slump into a chair.

“Oh, my God! My God! My God!” he moaned, over and over. “Oh, what shall I do? How could it have happened?”

For ten or fifteen seconds he moaned to himself and then his eyes must have fallen on the safe.

“What!” he yelled. “The fingerprints are gone!”

And just then there sounded the wail of a siren, the roaring exhaust of a police car, and heavy steps began pounding up the walk. The police had arrived in response to Garret’s orders.

If Boardman hadn’t gone to the door to let them in I’d have walked out and wished him a good evening. His spirit was broken, his nerve gone, and I had nothing to fear from him right then. I could have walked out and twisted his nose with impunity.

However, there was no need. The thought of the police caused him to awake to the necessities of the situation, and he fairly leaped from the chair and sprinted down the stairs.

“You see it was this way, officer—” I heard him saying as I slipped out of the death trap, and into the hallway. I’d rather liked to have stayed and listened for a bit, but it was no place for Ed Jenkins. I melted into the shadows, slipped down the back stairs, and into the night.

Half way down the alley in the next block I stopped to look back at the house. Lights blazed from every window I could see. Paul Boardman was going to have a great time making his explanations. But the real fun would commence after he’d told his story. Then it would develop that the police came to the house because Garret had telephoned them that a man had been killed there — and then, when the police arrived, they found the corpse to be Garret himself.

That would be some little hurdle for even Boardman to take.

I hunted up a friendly photographer, developed the two plates and put them in a safe and secret place. Then I climbed back into a Chinese disguise. Somehow I felt that I could take a chance with Soo Hoo Duck. I didn’t step back into the character of Yee Dooey Wah, however. I picked an older man, a gray-haired sage. The Chinks respect gray hairs.

Eight o’clock found me digesting a morning newspaper and sipping coffee. Headlines all over the front page announced that Ed Jenkins, famous criminal, known as the Phantom Crook because of his ability to slip through the fingers of the police, had shot and killed Bob Garret, one of the most efficient detectives on the force. There was a reward offered. Indignation ran high, and the police had thrown out their “dragnet.” It was predicted that the murderer would be in custody within another twenty-four hours.

The account was a bit blurred as to details, but I gathered that I had broken into Boardman’s house to rifle a safe, had been caught red-handed by Garret who had been trailing me, and I had killed him with a shotgun.

So they had framed that on me, had they? Oh, well, it’s all in a life time. That would knock my California immunity into a cocked hat. And, in the meantime, Boardman would be waging a relentless war. He must get me now or I might get him. He had seen something of my methods. There were other crooked detectives to take the place of Bob Garret, but there was in Garret’s death something of a grim warning that must have caused ripples to run up and down Boardman’s spine.

Anyhow, Helen Chadwick would read that paper and know that she had nothing to fear. There was only one witness to her attempted safe robbery left alive. It would be her word against Paul Boardman’s, if anything should ever come up now — and there was the matter of that photograph... No, Helen would read the paper and know she was safe. Boardman would do nothing, dared do nothing, until he had murdered me, either by due process of law or by the bullet of a hired killer.

I became conscious of someone standing by my side.

Casually, yet with every nerve alert, I peered up over the top of the paper. Soo Hoo Duck was standing beside me, his face wrinkled into its parchment smile.

“Good morning, my brother. You are a stranger in the city?”

I regarded him gravely. There was more than coincidence in his spying me out. He must have the eye of an eagle for piercing disguises. Did he know me as an imposter, or did he know me as Ed Jenkins, the one who had recently posed as Yee Dooey Wah? I couldn’t tell, could only take a chance.

“One needs but to know human nature,” I reminded him, “and he is never a stranger in any city.”

He bowed gravely, with great dignity, his clawlike hand pulling his coat the tighter about his hollow chest.

“Ah, yes, human nature,” he said meditatively. “One moment it is like a rushing stream, then it meets an obstruction and is dammed into a lake. Finally the lake bursts through its obstructions and carries all before it. My brother, I wish you pleasure in your visit here. In my small way I have some influence among my people. If there is anything I can do for you, pray command me.”

With that friendly word he was off.

I stared at him, speculatively — wondering. Upon his middle finger was a jade ring, and upon the ring was carved a great dragon, similar to the dragon which had been imprinted in the red wax on the paper I had received in the Mandarin Café.

Perhaps, after all, he was a powerful friend. If so, I might need him.

We had engaged in a duel to the death, Paul Boardman and I. He had unlimited influence, money, position, power, and he was frantically combing the city, seeking to bring about my death. On the other hand, I had no power, no influence, was listed as a crook, forced to be always on the outskirts of society — and yet I was fighting for the safety of the girl I loved. There was danger ahead, there would be adventures. Never before had I been in such need of a cool head and a quick wit.

If the man who made the mark of the wax dragon was an enemy, he would be merely one more enemy to outwit. If he should prove to be a friend, something seemed to tell me he would be a powerful friend, a friend not of mine so much as a friend of Helen Chadwick; and more than all, a friend of fair play. And there was the buzzard. Beyond doubt he was an enemy. He lived up to his appearance, a vulture who hovered about, companion of killers — and he had fastened his attention upon me.

All in all it would be a busy time — the next few weeks, or, perhaps, months. I would be back in my element, hunted by the police, trailed by gangsters. There would be a price on my head, both in crookdom and with the police. Yet, through it all, I must find some way to protect Helen Chadwick.

In any event, the die was cast. The future was on the lap of the gods, but, in the meantime, the first trick was mine.