by Max Brand
Jerry rose obediently and flashed on his precious pocket torch, and they went down to pass the turn and come again to the ragged wall of earth which terminated the passage. Jerry held the torch and passed it close to the dirt. All was solid. There was no sign of anything wrong. The very pick marks were clearly defined.
“Hold on,” whispered Ronicky Doone. “Hold on, Jerry. I seen something.” He snatched the electric torch, and together they peered at the patch from which the dried earth had fallen.
“Queer for hardpan to break up like that,” muttered Ronicky, cutting into the surface beneath the patch, with the point of his hunting knife. Instantly there was the sharp gritting of steel against steel.
The shout of Ronicky was an indrawn breath. The shout of Jerry Smith was a moan of relief.
Ronicky continued his observations. The thing was very clear. They had dug the tunnel to this point and excavated a place which they had guarded with a steel door, but, in order to conceal the hiding place, or whatever it might be, they cunningly worked the false wall of dirt against the face of it, using clay and a thin coating of plaster as a base.
“It’s a place they don’t use very often, maybe,” said Ronicky, “and that’s why they can afford to put up this fake wall of plaster and mud after every time they want to come down here. Pretty clever to leave that little pile of dirt on the floor, just like it had been worked off by the picks, eh? But we’ve found ’em, Jerry, and now all we got to do is to get to the door and into whatever lies beyond.”
“We’d better hurry, then,” cried Jerry.
“How come?”
“Take a breath.”
Ronicky obeyed; the air was beginning to fill with the pungent and unmistakable odor of burning wood!
21. THE MIRACLE
NO GREAT INTELLIGENCE was needed to understand the meaning of it. Fernand, having trapped his game, was now about to kill it. He could suffocate the two with smoke, blown into the tunnel, and make them rush blindly out. The moment they appeared, dazed and uncertain, the revolvers of half a dozen gunmen would be emptied into them.
“It’s like taking a trap full of rats,” said Ronicky bitterly, “and shaking them into a pail of water. Let’s go back and see what we can.”
They had only to turn the corner of the tunnel to be sure. Fernand had had the door of the tunnel slid noiselessly open, then, into the tunnel itself, smoking, slowly burning, pungent pieces of pine wood had been thrown, having been first soaked in oil, perhaps. The tunnel was rapidly filling with smoke, and through the white drifts of it they looked into the lighted cellar beyond. They would run out at last, gasping for breath and blinded by the smoke, to be shot down in a perfect light. So much was clear.
“Now back to the wall and try to find that door,” said Ronicky.
Jerry had already turned. In a moment they were back and tearing with their fingers at the sham wall, kicking loose fragments with their feet.
All the time, while they cleared a larger and larger space, they searched feverishly with the electric torch for some sign of a knob which would indicate a door, or some button or spring which might be used to open it. But there was nothing, and in the meantime the smoke was drifting back, in more and more unendurable clouds.
“I can’t stand much more,” declared Jerry at length.
“Keep low. The best air is there,” answered Ronicky.
A voice called from the mouth of the tunnel, and they could recognize the smooth tongue of Frederic Fernand. “Doone, I think I have you now. But trust yourselves to me, and all may still be well with you. Throw out your weapons, and then walk out yourselves, with your arms above your heads, and you may have a second chance. I don’t promise — I simply offer you a hope in the place of no hope at all. Is that a good bargain?”
“I’ll see you hung first,” answered Ronicky and turned again to his work at the wall.
But it seemed a quite hopeless task. The surface of the steel was still covered, after they had cleared it as much as they could, with a thin, clinging coat of plaster which might well conceal the button or device for opening the door. Every moment the task became infinitely harder.
Finally Jerry, his lungs nearly empty of oxygen, cast himself down on the floor and gasped. A horrible gagging sound betrayed his efforts for breath.
Ronicky knelt beside him. His own lungs were burning, and his head was thick and dizzy. “One more try, then we’ll turn and rush them and die fighting, Jerry.”
The other nodded and started to his feet. Together they made that last effort, fumbling with their hands across the rough surface, and suddenly — had they touched the spring, indeed? — a section of the surface before them swayed slowly in. Ronicky caught the half-senseless body of Jerry Smith and thrust him inside. He himself staggered after, and before him stood Ruth Tolliver!
While he lay panting on the floor, she closed the door through which they had come and then stood and silently watched them. Presently Smith sat up, and Ronicky Doone staggered to his feet, his head clearing rapidly.
He found himself in a small room, not more than eight feet square, with a ceiling so low that he could barely stand erect. As for the furnishings and the arrangement, it was more like the inside of a safe than anything else. There were, to be sure, three little stools, but nothing else that one would expect to find in an apartment. For the rest there was nothing but a series of steel drawers and strong chests, lining the walls of the room and leaving in the center very little room in which one might move about.
He had only a moment to see all of this. Ruth Tolliver, hooded in an evening cloak, but with the light gleaming in her coppery hair, was shaking him by the arm and leaning a white face close to him.
“Hurry!” she was saying. “There isn’t a minute to lose. You must start now, at once. They will find out — they will guess — and then—”
“John Mark?” he asked.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, realizing that she had said too much, and she pressed her hand over her mouth, looking at Ronicky Doone in a sort of horror.
Jerry Smith had come to his feet at last, but he remained in the background, staring with a befuddled mind at the lovely vision of the girl. Fear and excitement and pleasure had transformed her face, but she seemed trembling in an agony of desire to be gone. She seemed invincibly drawn to remain there longer still. Ronicky Doone stared at her, with a strange blending of pity and admiration. He knew that the danger was not over by any means, but he began to forget that.
“This way!” called the girl and led toward an opposite door, very low in the wall.
“Lady,” said Ronicky gently, “will you hold on one minute? They won’t start to go through the smoke for a while. They’ll think they’ve choked us, when we don’t come out on the rush, shooting. But they’ll wait quite a time to make sure. They don’t like my style so well that they’ll hurry me.” He smiled sourly at the thought. “And we got time to learn a lot of things that we’ll never find out, unless we know right now, pronto!”
He stepped before the girl, as he spoke. “How come you knew we were in there? How come you to get down here? How come you to risk everything you got to let us out through the treasure room of Mark’s gang?”
He had guessed as shrewdly as he could, and he saw, by her immediate wincing, that the shot had told.
“You strange, mad, wild Westerner!” she exclaimed. “Do you mean to tell me you want to stay here and talk? Even if you have a moment to spare you must use it. If you knew the men with whom you are dealing you would never dream of—”
In her pause he said, smiling: “Lady, it’s tolerable clear that you don’t know me. But the way I figure it is this: a gent may die any time, but, when he finds a minute for good living, he’d better make the most of it.”
He knew by her eyes that she half guessed his meaning, but she wished to be certain. “What do you intend by that?” she asked.
“It’s tolerable simple,” said Ronicky. “I’ve seen square things done in my life, bu
t I’ve never yet seen a girl throw up all she had to do a good turn for a gent she’s seen only once. You follow me, lady? I pretty near guess the trouble you’re running into.”
“You guess what?” she asked.
“I guess that you’re one of John Mark’s best cards. You’re his chief gambler, lady, and he uses you on the big game.”
She had drawn back, one hand pressed against her breast, her mouth tight with the pain. “You have guessed all that about me?” she asked faintly. “That means you despise me!”
“What folks do don’t matter so much,” said Ronicky. “It’s the reasons they have for doing a thing that matters, I figure, and the way they do it. I dunno how John Mark hypnotized you and made a tool out of you, but I do know that you ain’t changed by what you’ve done.”
Ronicky Doone stepped to her quickly and took both her hands. He was not, ordinarily, particularly forward with girls. Now he acted as gracefully as if he had been the father of Ruth Tolliver. “Lady,” he said, “you’ve saved two lives tonight. That’s a tolerable lot to have piled up to anybody’s credit. Besides, inside you’re snow-white. We’ve got to go, but I’m coming back. Will you let me come back?”
“Never, never!” declared Ruth Tolliver. “You must never see me — you must never see Caroline Smith again. Any step you take in that direction is under peril of your life. Leave New York, Ronicky Doone. Leave it as quickly as you may, and never come back. Only pray that his arm isn’t long enough to follow you.”
“Leave Caroline?” he asked. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Ruth. When you get back home you’re going to tell Caroline that Jerry, here, has seen the light about Mark, and that he has money enough to pay back what he owes.”
“But I haven’t,” broke in Jerry.
“I have it,” said Ronicky, “and that’s the same thing.”
“I’ll take no charity,” declared Jerry Smith.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” said Ronicky Doone. “You been bothering enough, son. Go tell Caroline what I’ve said,” he went on to the girl. “Let her know that they’s no chain on anybody, and, if she wants to find Bill Gregg, all she’s got to do is go across the street. You understand?”
“But, even if I were to tell her, how could she go, Ronicky Doone, when she’s watched?”
“If she can’t make a start and get to a man that loves her and is waiting for her, right across the street, she ain’t worth worrying about,” said Ronicky sternly. “Do we go this way?”
She hurried before them. “You’ve waited too long — you’ve waited too long!” she kept whispering in her terror, as she led them through the door, paused to turn out the light behind her, and then conducted them down a passage like that on the other side of the treasure chamber.
It was all deadly black and deadly silent, but the rustling of the girl’s dress, as she hurried before them, was their guide. And always her whisper came back: “Hurry! Hurry! I fear it is too late!”
Suddenly they were climbing up a narrow flight of steps. They stood under the starlight in a back yard, with houses about them on all sides.
“Go down that alley, and you will be on the street,” said the girl. “Down that alley, and then hurry — run — find the first taxi. Will you do that?”
“We’ll sure go, and we’ll wait for Caroline Smith — and you, too!”
“Don’t talk madness! Why will you stay? You risk everything for yourselves and for me!”
Jerry Smith was already tugging at Ronicky’s arm to draw him away, but the Westerner was stubbornly pressing back to the girl. He had her hand and would not leave it.
“If you don’t show up, lady,” he said, “I’ll come to find you. You hear?”
“No, no!”
“I swear!”
“Bless you, but never venture near again. But, oh, Ronicky Doone, I wish ten other men in the whole world could be half so generous and wild as you!” Suddenly her hand was slipped from his, and she was gone into the shadows.
Down the alley went Jerry Smith, but he returned in an agony of dread to find that Ronicky Doone was still running here and there, in a blind confusion, probing the shadowy corners of the yard in search of the girl.
“Come off, you wild man,” said Jerry. “They’ll be on our heels any minute — they may be waiting for us now, down the alley — come off, idiot, quick!”
“If I thought they was a chance of finding her I’d stay,” declared Ronicky, shaking his head bitterly. “Whether you and me live, don’t count beside a girl like that. Getting soot on one tip of her finger might mean more’n whether you or me die.”
“Maybe, maybe,” said the other, “but answer that tomorrow; right now, let’s start to make sure of ourselves, and we can come back to find her later.”
Ronicky Doone, submitting partly to the force and partly to the persuasion of his friend, turned reluctantly and followed him down the alley.
22. MARK MAKES A MOVE
PASSING HURRIEDLY OUT of the cloakroom, a little later, Ruth met Simonds, the lieutenant of Frederic Fernand, in the passage. He was a ratfaced little man, with a furtive smile. Not an unpleasant smile, but it was continually coming and going, as if he wished earnestly to win the favor of the men before him, but greatly doubted his ability to do so. Ruth Tolliver, knowing his genius for the cards, knowing his cold and unscrupulous soul, detested him heartily.
When she saw his eyes flicker up and down the hall she hesitated. Obviously he wished to speak with her, and obviously he did not wish to be seen in the act. As she paused he stepped to her, his face suddenly set with determination.
“Watch John Mark,” he whispered. “Don’t trust him. He suspects everything!”
“What? Everything about what?” she asked.
Simonds gazed at her for a moment with a singular expression. There were conjoined cynicism, admiration, doubt, and fear in his glance. But, instead of speaking again, he bowed and slipped away into the open hall.
She heard him call, and she heard Fernand’s oily voice make answer. And at that she shivered.
What had Simonds guessed? How, under heaven, did he know where she had gone when she left the gaming house? Or did he know? Had he not merely guessed? Perhaps he had been set on by Fernand or Mark to entangle and confuse her?
There remained, out of all this confusion of guesswork, a grim feeling that Simonds did indeed know, and that, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he was doing an unbought, a purely generous thing.
She remembered, now, how often Simonds had followed her with his eyes, how often his face had lighted when she spoke even casually to him. Yes, there might be a reason for Simonds’ generosity. But that implied that he knew fairly well what John Mark himself half guessed. The thought that she was under the suspicion of Mark himself was terrible to her.
She drew a long breath and advanced courageously into the gaming rooms.
The first thing she saw was Fernand hurrying a late comer toward the tables, laughing and chatting as he went. She shuddered at the sight of him. It was strange that he, who had, a moment before, in the very cellar of that house, been working to bring about the death of two men, should now be immaculate, self-possessed.
A step farther and she saw John Mark sitting at a console table, with his back to the room and a cup of tea before him. That was, in fact, his favorite drink at all hours of the day or night. To see Fernand was bad enough, but to see the master mind of all the evil that passed around her was too much. The girl inwardly thanked Heaven that his back was turned and started to pass him as softly as possible.
“Just a minute, Ruth,” he called, as she was almost at the door of the room.
For a moment there was a frantic impulse in her to bolt like a foolish child afraid of the dark. In the next apartment were light and warmth and eager faces and smiles and laughter, and here, behind her, was the very spirit of darkness calling her back. After an imperceptible hesitation she turned.
Mark had not turned in his chair,
but it was easy to discover how he had known of her passing. A small oval mirror, fixed against the wall before him, had shown her image. How much had it betrayed, she wondered, of her guiltily stealthy pace? She went to him and found that he was leisurely and openly examining her in the glass, as she approached, his chin resting on one hand, his thin face perfectly calm, his eyes hazy with content. It was a habit of his to regard her like a picture, but she had never become used to it; she was always disconcerted by it, as she was at this moment.
He rose, of course, when she was beside him, and asked her to sit down.
“But I’ve hardly touched a card,” she said. “This isn’t very professional, you know, wasting a whole evening.”
She was astonished to see him flush to the roots of his hair. His voice shook. “Sit down, please.”
She obeyed, positively inert with surprise.
“Do you think I keep you at this detestable business because I want the money?” he asked. “Dear Heaven! Ruth, is that what you think of me?” Fortunately, before she could answer, he went on: “No, no, no! I have wanted to make you a free and independent being, my dear, and that is why I have put you through the most dangerous and exacting school in the world. You understand?”
“I think I do,” she replied falteringly.
“But not entirely. Let me pour you some tea? No?”
He sighed, as he blew forth the smoke of a cigarette. “But you don’t understand entirely,” he continued, “and you must. Go back to the old days, when you knew nothing of the world but me. Can you remember?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Then you certainly recall a time when, if I had simply given directions, you would have been mine, Ruth. I could have married you the moment you became a woman. Is that true?” “Yes,” she whispered, “that is perfectly true.” The coldness that passed over her taught her for the first time how truly she dreaded that marriage which had been postponed, but which inevitably hung over her head.