The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  Instantly the room leaped to frenzied excitement. Men dived for the doors, bets forgotten and chips scattered over the floor. Chairs were smashed as they charged over them, tables overturned. The unwary were trodden underfoot.

  Bromfield went into a panic. Why had he been fool enough to trust Durand? No doubt the fellow would ruin him as willingly as he would Lindsay. The raid was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule time. The ward politician had betrayed him. He felt sure of it. All the carefully prepared plans agreed upon he jettisoned promptly. His sole thought was to save himself, not to trap his rival.

  Lindsay caught him by the arm. "Let's try the back room."

  He followed Clay, Durand's gangmen at his heels.

  The lights went out.

  The Westerner tried the window. It was heavily barred outside. He turned to search for a door.

  Brought up by the partition, Bromfield was whimpering with fear as he too groped for a way of escape. A pale moon shone through the window upon his evening clothes.

  In the dim light Clay knew that tragedy impended. "Slim" Jim had his automatic out.

  "I've got you good," the chauffeur snarled.

  The gun cracked. Bromfield bleated in frenzied terror as Clay dashed forward. A chair swung round in a sweeping arc. As it descended the spitting of the gun slashed through the darkness a second time.

  "Slim" Jim went down, rolled over, lay like a log.

  Some one dived for Lindsay and drove him against the wall, pinning him by the waist. A second figure joined the first and caught the cattleman's wrist.

  Then the lights flashed on again. Clay saw that the man who had flung him against the partition was Gorilla Dave. A plain-clothes man with a star had twisted his wrist and was clinging to it. Bromfield was nowhere to be seen, but an open door to the left showed that he had found at least a temporary escape.

  A policeman came forward and stooped over the figure of the prostrate man.

  "Some one's croaked a guy," he said.

  Gorilla Dave spoke up quickly. "This fellow did it. With a chair. I seen him."

  There was a moment before Lindsay answered quietly. "He shot twice. The gun must be lying under him where he fell."

  Already men had crowded forward to the scene of the tragedy, moved by the morbid curiosity a crowd has in such sights. Two policemen pushed them back and turned the still body over. No revolver was to be seen.

  "Anybody know who this is?" one of the officers asked.

  "Collins--'Slim' Jim," answered big Dave.

  "Well, he's got his this time," the policeman said. "Skull smashed."

  Clay's heart sank. In that noise of struggling men and crashing furniture very likely the sound of the shots had been muffled. The revolver gone, false testimony against him, proof that he had threatened Collins available, Clay knew that he was in desperate straits.

  "There was another guy here with him in them glad rags," volunteered one of the gamblers captured in the raid.

  "Who was he?" asked the plain-clothes man of his prisoner.

  Clay was silent. He was thinking rapidly. His enemies had him trapped at last with the help of circumstance, Why bring Bromfield into it? It would mean trouble and worry for Beatrice.

  "Better speak up, young fellow, me lad," advised the detective. "It won't help you any to be sulky. You're up against the electric chair sure."

  The Arizonan looked at him with the level, unafraid eyes of the hills.

  "I reckon I'll not talk till I'm ready," he said in his slow drawl.

  The handcuffs clicked on his wrists.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  BAD NEWS

  Colin Whitford came into the room carrying a morning paper. His step was hurried, his eyes eager. When he spoke there was the lift of excitement in his voice.

  "Bee, I've got bad news."

  "Is the Bird Cage flooded?" asked Beatrice. "Or have the miners called a strike again?"

  "Worse than that. Lindsay's been arrested. For murder."

  The bottom fell out of her heart. She caught at the corner of a desk to steady herself. "Murder! It can't be! Must be some one of the same name."

  "I reckon not, honey. It's Clay sure enough. Listen." He read the headlines of a front-page story.

  "It can't be Clay! What would he be doing in a gambling-dive?" She reached for the paper, but when she had it the lines blurred before her eyes. "Read it, please."

  Whitford read the story to the last line. Long before he had finished, his daughter knew the one arrested was Clay. She sat down heavily, all the life stricken from her young body.

  "It's that man Durand. He's done this and fastened it on Clay. We'll find a way to prove Clay didn't do it."

  "Maybe, in self-defense--"

  Beatrice pushed back her father's hesitant suggestion, and even while she did it a wave of dread swept over her. The dead man was the same criminal "Slim" Jim Collins whom the cattleman had threatened in order to protect the Millikan girl. The facts that the man had been struck down by a chair and that her friend claimed, according to the paper, that the gunman had fired two shots, buttressed the solution offered by Whitford. But the horror of it was too strong for her. Against reason her soul protested that Clay could not have killed a man. It was too horrible, too ghastly, that through the faults of others he should be put in such a situation.

  And why should her friend be in such a place unless he had been trapped by the enemies who were determined to ruin him? She knew he had a contempt for men who wasted their energies in futile dissipations. He was too clean, too much a son of the wind-swept desert, to care anything about the low pleasures of indecent and furtive vice. He was the last man she knew likely to be found enjoying a den of this sort.

  "Dad, I'm going to him," she announced with crisp decision.

  Her father offered no protest. His impulse, too, was to stand by the friend in need. He had no doubt Clay had killed the man, but he had a sure conviction it had been done in self-defense.

  "We'll get the best lawyers in New York for him, honey," he said. "Nobody will slip anything over on Lindsay if we can help it."

  "Will they let us see him? Or shall we have to get permission from some one?"

  "We'll have to get an order. I know the district attorney. He'll do what he can for me, but maybe it'll take time."

  Beatrice rose, strong again and resilient. Her voice was vibrant with confidence. "Then after you've called up the district attorney, we'll drive to Clay's flat in Harlem and find out from Johnnie what he can tell us. Perhaps he knows what Clay was doing in that place they raided."

  It was not necessary to go to the Runt. He came to them. As Beatrice and her father stepped into the car Johnnie and Kitty appeared round the corner. Both of them had the news of a catastrophe written on their faces. A very little encouragement and they would be in tears.

  "Ain't it tur'ble, Miss Beatrice? They done got Clay at last. After he made 'em all look like plugged nickels they done fixed it so he'll mebbe go to the electric chair and--"

  "Stop that nonsense, Johnnie," ordered Miss Whitford sharply, a pain stabbing her heart at his words. "Don't begin whining already. We've got to see him through. Buck up and tell me what you know."

  "That's right, Johnnie,"' added the mining man. "You and Kitty quit looking like the Atlantic Ocean in distress. We've got to endure the grief and get busy. We'll get Lindsay out of this hole all right."

  "You're dawg-goned whistlin'. Y'betcha, by jollies!" agreed the Runt, immensely cheered by Whitford's confidence. "We been drug into this an' we'll sure hop to it."

  "When did you see Clay last? How did he come to be in that gambling-house? Did he say anything to you about going there?" The girl's questions tumbled over each other in her hurry.

  "Well, ma'am, it must 'a' been about nine o'clock that Clay he left last night. I recollect because--"

  "It doesn't matter why. Where was he going?"

  "To meet Mr. Bromfield at his club," said Kitty.

  "Mr. Bromfield!" cried
Beatrice, surprised. "Are you sure?"

  "Tha's what Clay said," corroborated the husband. "Mr. Bromfield invited him. We both noticed it because it seemed kinda funny, him and Clay not bein'--"

  "Johnnie," his wife reproved, mindful of the relationship between this young woman and the clubman.

  "Did he say which club?"

  "Seems to me he didn't, not as I remember. How about that, Kitty?"

  "No, I'm sure he didn't. He said he wouldn't be back early. So we went to bed. We s'posed after we got up this mo'nin' he was sleepin' in his room till the paper come and I looked at it." Johnnie gave way to lament. "I told him awhile ago we had orto go back to Arizona or they'd git him. And now they've gone and done it sure enough."

  Keen as a hawk on the hunt, Beatrice turned to her father quickly. "I'm going to get Clarendon on the 'phone. He'll know all about it."

  "Why will he know all about it?"

  "Because he was with Clay. He's the man the paper says the police are looking for--the man with Clay when it happened."

  Her father's eyes lit. "That's good guessing, Bee."

  It was her fiancé's man who answered the girl's call. She learned that Clarendon was still in his room.

  "He's quite sick this morning, Miss," the valet added.

  "Tell him I want to talk with him. It's important."

  "I don't think, Miss, that he's able--"

  "Will you please tell him what I say?"

  Presently the voice of Bromfield, thin and worried, came to her over the wire. "I'm ill, Bee. Absolutely done up. I--I can't talk."

  "Tell me about Clay Lindsay. Were you with him when--when it happened?"

  There was a perceptible pause before the answer came.

  "With him?" She could feel his terror throbbing over the wire. Though she could not see him, she knew her question had stricken him white. "With him where?"

  "At this gambling-house--Maddock's?"

  "No, I--I--Bee, I tell you I'm ill."

  "He went out last night to join you at your club. I know that. When did you see him last?"

  "I--we didn't--he didn't come."

  "Then didn't you see him at all?"

  There was another pause, significant and telling, followed by a quavering "No-o."

  "Clary, I want to see you--right away."

  "I'm ill, I tell you--can't leave my bed." He gave a groan too genuine to doubt.

  Beatrice hung up the receiver. Her eyes sparked. For all her slimness, she looked both competent and dangerous.

  "What does he say?" her father asked.

  "Says he didn't meet Clay at all--that he didn't show up. Dad, there's something wrong about it. Clary's in a panic about something. I'm going to see him, no matter whether he can leave his room or not."

  Whitford looked dubious. "I don't see--"

  "Well, I do," his daughter cut him off decisively. "We're going to his rooms--now. Why not? He says he's ill. All right. I'm engaged to be married to him and I've a right to see how ill he is."

  "What's in your noodle, honey? You've got some kind of a suspicion. What is it?"

  "I think Clary knows something. My notion is that he was at Maddock's and that he's in a blue funk for fear he'll be found and named as an accessory. I'm going to find out all he can tell me."

  "But--"

  She looked at her father directly, a deep meaning in the lovely eyes. A little tremor ran through her body. "Dad, I'm going to save Clay. That's the only thing that counts."

  Her words were an appeal, a challenge. They told him that her heart belonged to the friend in prison, and they carried him back somehow to the hour when the nurse first laid her, a tiny baby, in his arms.

  His heart was very tender to her. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."

  CHAPTER XXX

  BEE MAKES A MORNING CALL

  Their chauffeur broke the speed laws getting them to the apartment house for bachelors where Bromfield lived.

  His valet for once was caught off guard when he opened the door to them. Beatrice was inside before he could quite make up his mind how best to meet this frontal attack.

  "We came to see Mr. Bromfield," she said.

  "Sorry, Miss. He's really quite ill. The doctor says--"

  "I'm Miss Whitford. We're engaged to be married. It's very important that I see him."

  "Yes, Miss, I know."

  The man was perfectly well aware that his master wanted of all things to avoid a meeting with her. For some reason or other, Bromfield was in a state of collapse this morning the valet could not understand. The man's business was to protect him until he had recovered. But he could not flatly turn his master's fiancée out of the apartment. His eye turned to Whitford and found no help there. He fell back on the usual device of servants.

  "I don't really think he can see you, Miss. The doctor has specially told me to guard against any excitement. But I'll ask Mr. Bromfield if--if he feels up to it."

  The valet passed into what was evidently a bedroom and closed the door behind him. There was a faint murmur of voices.

  "I'm going in now," Beatrice announced abruptly to her father.

  She moved forward quickly, before Whitford could stop her, whipped open the door, and stepped into the room. Her father followed her reluctantly.

  Clarendon, in a frogged dressing-gown, lay propped up by pillows. Beside the bed was a tray, upon which was a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of soda. His figure seemed to have fallen together and his seamed face was that of an old man. But it was the eyes that held her. They were full of stark terror. The look in them took the girl's breath. They told her that he had undergone some great shock.

  He shivered at sight of her.

  "What is it, Clary?" she cried, moving toward him. "Tell me--tell me all about it."

  "I--I'm ill." He quaked it from a burning throat.

  "You were all right, yesterday. Why are you ill now?"

  He groaned unhappily.

  "You're going to tell me everything--everything."

  His fascinated, frightened eyes clung to this straight, slim girl whose look stabbed into him and shook his soul. Why had she come to trouble him this morning while he was cowering in fear of the men who would break in to drag him away to prison?

  "Nothing to tell," he got out with a gulp.

  "Oh, yes, you have. Are you ill because of what happened at Maddock's?"

  He tried to pull himself together, to stop the chattering of his teeth.

  "N-nonsense, my dear. I'm done up completely. Delighted to see you and all that, but--Won't you go home?" His appealing eyes passed to Whitford. "Can't you take her away?"

  "No, I won't go home--and he can't take me away." Her resolution was hard as steel. It seemed to crowd inexorably upon the shivering wretch in the frogged gown. "What is it you're so afraid to tell me, Clarendon?"

  He quailed at her thrust. "What--what do you mean?"

  She knew now, beyond any question or doubt, that he had been present when "Slim" Jim Collins had been killed. He had seen a man's life snuffed out, was still trembling for fear he might be called in as a party to the crime.

  "You'd better tell me before it's too late. How did you and Clay Lindsay come to go to that den?"

  "We went out to--to see the town."

  "But why to that place? Are you in the habit of going there?"

  He shuddered. "Never was there before. I had a card. Some one gave it to me. So we went in for a few minutes--to see what it was like. The police raided the place." He dropped his sentences reluctantly, as though they were being forced from him in pain.

  "Well?"

  "Everybody tried to escape. The lights went out. I found a back door and got away. Then I came home."

  "What about Clay?"

  Bromfield told the truth. "I didn't see him after the lights went out, except for a moment. He was running at the man with the gun."

  "You saw the gun?"

  He nodded, moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

  "And the
--the shooting? Did you see that?"

  Twice the words he tried to say faded on his lips. At last he managed a "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I--found a door and escaped."

  "You must have heard shooting."

  "I heard shots as I ran down the stairs. This morning I read that--that a man was--" He swallowed down a lump and left the sentence unfinished.