by Max Brand
“I wouldn’t believe at first, though he showed me what looked like proofs. At last I believed enough to agree to go to New York and see for myself. I came here, and saw my brother and made him confess. What it was I can’t tell you. I can only say that his life is in the hand of John Mark. John Mark has only to say ten words, and my brother is dead. He told me that. He showed me the hold that Mark had over him, and begged me to do what I could for him. I didn’t see how I could be of use to him, but John Mark showed me. He taught me to steal, and I have stolen. He taught me to lie, and I have lied. And he has me still in the hollow of his hand, do you see? And that’s why I say that it’s hopeless. Even if you could fight against John Mark, which no one can, you couldn’t help me. The moment you strike him he strikes my brother.”
“Curse him!” exclaimed Ronicky. “Curse the hound!” Then he added: “They’s just one thing to do, first of all. You got to go back to John Mark. Tell him that you came over here. Tell him that you seen Bill Gregg, but you only came to say good-by to him, and to ask him to leave town and go West. Then, tomorrow, we’ll move out, and he may think that we’ve gone. Meantime the thing you do is to give me the name of your brother and tell me where I can find him. I’ll hunt him up. Maybe something can be done for him. I dunno, but that’s where we’ve got to try.”
“But—” she began.
“Do what he says,” whispered Bill Gregg. “I’ve doubted Ronicky before, but look at all that he’s done? Do what he says, Caroline.”
“It means putting him in your power,” she said at last, “just as he was put in the power of John Mark, but I trust you. Give me a slip of paper, and I’ll write on it what you want.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Disarming Suspicion
From the house across the street Caroline Smith slipped out upon the pavement and glanced warily about her. The street was empty, quieter and more villagelike than ever, yet she knew perfectly well that John Mark had not allowed her to be gone so long without keeping watch over her. Somewhere from the blank faces of those houses across the street his spies kept guard over her movements. Here she glanced sharply over her shoulder, and it seemed to her that a shadow flitted into the door of a basement, farther up the street.
At that she fled and did not stop running until she was at the door of the house of Mark. Since all was quiet, up and down the street, she paused again, her hand upon the knob. To enter meant to step back into the life which she hated. There had been a time when she had almost loved the life to which John Mark introduced her; there had been a time when she had rejoiced in the nimbleness of her fingers which had enabled her to become an adept as a thief. And, by so doing, she had kept the life of her brother from danger, she verily believed. She was still saving him, and, so long as she worked for John Mark, she knew that her brother was safe, yet she hesitated long at the door.
It would be only the work of a moment to flee back to the man she loved, tell him that she could not and dared not stay longer with the master criminal, and beg him to take her West to a clean life. Her hand fell from the knob, but she raised it again immediately.
It would not do to flee, so long as John Mark had power of life or death over her brother. If Ronicky Doone, as he promised, was able to inspire her brother with the courage to flee from New York, give up his sporting life and seek refuge in some far-off place, then, indeed, she would go with Bill Gregg to the ends of the earth and mock the cunning fiend who had controlled her life so long.
The important thing now was to disarm him of all suspicion, make him feel that she had only visited Bill Gregg in order to say farewell to him. With this in her mind she opened the front door and stepped into the hall, always lighted with ominous dimness. That gloom fell about her like the visible presence of John Mark.
A squat, powerful figure glided out of the doorway to the right. It was Harry Morgan, and the side of his face was swathed in bandages, so that he had to twist his mouth violently in order to speak.
“The chief,” he said abruptly. “Beat it quick to his room. He wants you.”
“Why?” asked Caroline, hoping to extract some grain or two of information from the henchman.
“Listen, kid,” said the sullen criminal. “D’you think I’m a nut to blow what I know? You beat it, and he’ll tell you what he wants.”
The violence of this language, however, had given her clues enough to the workings of the chief’s mind. She had always been a favored member of the gang, and the men had whistled attendance on her hardly less than upon Ruth Tolliver herself. This sudden harshness in the language of Harry Morgan told her that too much was known, or guessed.
A sudden weakness came over her. “I’m going out,” she said, turning to Harry Morgan who had sauntered over to the front door.
“Are you?” he asked.
“I’m going to take one turn more up the block. I’m not sleepy yet,” she repeated and put her hand on the knob of the door.
“Not so you could notice it, you ain’t,” retorted Morgan. “We’ve taken lip enough from you, kid. Your day’s over. Go up and see what the chief has to say, but you ain’t going through this door unless you walk over me.”
“Those are orders?” she asked, stepping back, with her heart turning cold.
“Think I’m doing this on my own hook?”
She turned slowly to the stairs. With her hand on the balustrade she decided to try the effect of one personal appeal. Nerving herself she whirled and ran to Harry Morgan. “Harry,” she whispered, “let me go out till I’ve worked up my courage. You know he’s terrible to face when he’s angry. And I’m afraid, Harry—I’m terribly afraid!”
“Are you?” asked Morgan. “Well, you ain’t the first. Go and take your medicine like the rest of us have done, time and time running.”
There was no help for it. She went wearily up the stairs to the room of the master thief. There she gave the accustomed rap with the proper intervals. Instantly the cold, soft voice, which she knew and hated so, called to her to enter.
She found him in the act of putting aside his book. He was seated in a deep easy-chair; a dressing gown of silk and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles gave him a look of owlish wisdom, with a touch of the owl’s futility of expression, likewise. He rose, as usual, with all his courtesy. She thought at first, as he showed her to a chair, that he was going to take his usual damnable tack of pretended ignorance in order to see how much she would confess. However, tonight this was not his plan of battle.
The moment she was seated, he removed his spectacles, drew a chair close to hers and sat down, leaning far forward. “Now, my dear, foolish girl,” said the master thief, smiling benevolently upon her, “what have you been doing tonight to make us all miserable?”
She knew at once that he was aware of every move she had made, from the first to the last. It gave her firmness to tell the lie with suavity. “It’s a queer yarn, John,” she said.
“I’m used to queer yarns,” he answered. “But where have you been all this time? It was only to take five minutes, I thought.”
She made herself laugh. “That’s because you don’t know Ronicky Doone, John.”
“I’m getting to know him, however,” said the master. “And, before I’m done, I hope to know him very well indeed.”
“Well, he has a persuasive tongue.”
“I think I noticed that for myself.”
“And, when he told me how poor Bill Gregg had come clear across the continent—”
“No wonder you were touched, my dear. New Yorkers won’t travel so far, will they? Not for a girl, I mean.”
“Hardly! But Ronicky Doone made it such a sad affair that I promised I’d go across and see Bill Gregg.”
“Not in his room?”
“I knew you wouldn’t let him come to see me here.”
“Never presuppose what I’ll do. But go on—I’m interested—very. Just as much as if Ronicky Doone himself were telling me.”
She eyed him shrewdly, but, if
there were any deception in him, he hid it well. She could not find the double meaning that must have been behind his words. “I went there, however,” she said, “because I was sorry for him, John. If you had seen you’d have been sorry, too, or else you would have laughed; I could hardly keep from it at first.”
“I suppose he took you in his arms at once?”
“I think he wanted to. Then, of course, I told him at once why I had come.”
“Which was?”
“Simply that it was absurd for him to stay about and persecute me; that the letters I wrote him were simply written for fun, when I was doing some of my cousin’s work at the correspondence schools; that the best thing he could do would be to take my regrets and go back to the West.”
“Did you tell him all that?” asked John Mark in a rather changed voice.
“Yes; but not quite so bluntly.”
“Naturally not; you’re a gentle girl, Caroline. I suppose he took it very hard.”
“Very, but in a silly way. He’s full of pride, you see. He drew himself up and gave me a lecture about deceiving men.”
“Well, since you have lost interest in him, it makes no difference.”
“But in a way,” she said faintly, rising slowly from her chair, “I can’t help feeling some interest.”
“Naturally not. But, you see, I was worried so much about you and this foolish fellow that I gave orders for him to be put out of the way, as soon as you left him.”
Caroline Smith stood for a moment stunned and then ran to him.
“No, no!” she declared. “In the name of the dear mercy of Heaven, John, you haven’t done that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then call him back—the one you sent. Call him back, John, and I’ll serve you the rest of my life without question. I’ll never fail you, John, but for your own sake and mine, for the sake of everything fair in the world, call him back!”
He pushed away her hands, but without violence. “I thought it would be this way,” he said coldly. “You told a very good lie, Caroline. I suppose clever Ronicky Doone rehearsed you in it, but it needed only the oldest trick in the world to expose you.”
She recoiled from him. “It was only a joke, then? You didn’t mean it, John? Thank Heaven for that!”
A savagery which, though generally concealed, was never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. “Get to your room,” he said fiercely, “get to your room. I’ve wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I’ve done? I’ve a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I shall do.”
She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and he followed her, trembling with rage.
“Or have you a choice?” he asked. “Brother or lover, which shall it be?”
She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror she fled to her room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Old Scars
In his room Bill Gregg was striding up and down, throwing his hands toward the ceiling. Now and then he paused to slap Ronicky Doone on the back.
“It’s fate, Ronicky,” he said, over and over again. “Thinking of waking up and finding the girl that you’ve loved and lost standing waiting for you! It’s the dead come to life. I’m the happiest man in the world. Ronicky, old boy, one of these days I’ll be able—” He paused, stopped by the solemnity of Doone’s face. “What’s wrong, Ronicky?”
“I don’t know,” said the other gloomily. He rubbed his arms slowly, as if to bring back the circulation to numbed limbs.
“You act like you’re sick, Ronicky.”
“I’m getting bad-luck signs, Bill. That’s the short of it.”
“How come?”
“The old scars are prickling.”
“Scars? What scars?”
“Ain’t you noticed ’em.”
It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat and shirt. The rounded body, alive with playing muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks—scars left by healed wounds.
“At your age? A kid like you with scars?” Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed scars and gasped. “How come, Ronicky,” he asked huskily in his astonishment, “that you got all those and ain’t dead yet?”
“I dunno,” said the other. “I wonder a pile about that, myself. Fact is I’m a lucky gent, Bill Gregg.”
“They say back yonder in your country that you ain’t never been beaten, Ronicky.”
“They sure say a lot of foolish things, just to hear themselves talk, partner. A gent gets pretty good with a gun, then they say he’s the best that ever breathed—that he’s never been beat. But they forget things that happened just a year back. No, sir; I sure took my lickings when I started.”
“But, dog-gone it, Ronicky, you ain’t twenty-four now!”
“Between sixteen and twenty-two I spent a pile of time in bed, Bill, and you can lay to that!”
“And you kept practicing?”
“Sure, when I found out that I had to. I never liked shooting much. Hated to think of having a gent’s life right inside the crook of my trigger finger. But, when I seen that I had to get good, why I just let go all holds and practiced day and night. And I still got to practice.”
“I seen that,” said Bill Gregg. “Every day, for an hour or two, you work with your guns.”
“It’s like being a musician,” said Ronicky without enthusiasm. “I heard about it once. Suppose a gent works up to be a fine musician, maybe at the piano. You’d think, when he got to the top and knew everything, he could lay off and take things easy the rest of his life. But not him! Nope, he’s got to work like a slave every day.”
“But how come you felt them scars pricking as a bad-luck sign, Ronicky?” he asked after a time. “Is there anything that’s gone wrong, far as you see?”
“I dunno,” said Ronicky gravely. “Maybe not, and maybe so. I ain’t a prophet, but I don’t like having everything so smooth—not when they’s a gent like the man with the sneer on the other end of the wire. It means he’s holding back some cards on us, and I’d sure like to see the color of what he’s got. What I’m going to work for is this, Bill: To get Caroline’s brother, Jerry Smith, and rustle him out of town.”
“But how can you do that when John Mark has a hold on him?”
“That’s a pile of bunk, Bill. I figure Mark is just bluffing. He ain’t going to turn anybody over to the police. Less he has to do with the police the happier he’ll be. You can lay to that. Matter of fact, he’s been loaning money to Caroline’s brother. You heard her say that. Also, he thinks that Mark is the finest and most generous gent that ever stepped. Probably a selfish skunk of a spoiled kid, this brother of hers. Most like he puts Mark up as sort of an ideal. Well, the thing to do is to get hold of him and wake him up and pay off his debts to Mark, which most like run to several thousand.”
“Several thousand, Ronicky? But where’ll we get the money?”
“You forget that I can always get money. It grows on the bushes for me.” He grinned at Bill Gregg.
“Once we get Jerry Smith, then the whole gang of us will head straight West, as fast as we can step. Now let’s hit the hay.”
Never had the mind of Ronicky Doone worked more quickly and surely to the point. The case of Jerry Smith was exactly what he had surmised. As for the crime of which John Mark knew, and which he held like a club over Jerry Smith, it had been purely and simply an act of self-defense. But, to Caroline and her brother, Mark had made it seem clear that the shadow of the electric chair was before the young fellow.
Mark had worked seriously to win Caroline. She was remarkably dexterous; she was the soul of courage; and, if he could once make her love her work, she would make him rich. In the meantime she did very well in
deed, and he strengthened his hold on her through her brother. It was not hard to do. If Jerry Smith was the soul of recklessness, he was the soul of honor, also, in many ways. John Mark had only to lead the boy toward a life of heavy expenditures and gaming, lending him, from time to time, the wherewithal to keep it up. In this way he anchored Jerry as a safeguard to windward, in case of trouble.
But, now that Ronicky Doone had entered the tangle, everything was changed. That clear-eyed fellow might see through to the very bottom of Mark’s tidewater plans. He might step in and cut the Gordian knot by simply paying off Jerry’s debts. Telling the boy to laugh at the danger of exposure, Doone could snatch him away to the West. So Mark came to forestall Ronicky, by sending Jerry out of town and out of reach, for the time being. He would not risk the effect of Ronicky’s tongue. Had not Caroline been persuaded under his very eyes by this strange Westerner?
Very early the next morning John Mark went straight to the apartment of his protégé. It was his own man, Northup, who answered the bell and opened the door to him. He had supplied Northup to Jerry Smith, immediately after Caroline accomplished the lifting of the Larrigan emeralds. That clever piece of work had proved the worth of the girl and made it necessary to spare no expense on Jerry. So he had given him the tried and proven Northup.
The moment he looked into the grinning face of Northup he knew that the master was not at home, and both the chief and the servant relaxed. They were friends of too long a term to stand on ceremony.
“There’s no one here?” asked Mark, as a matter of form.
“Not a soul—the kid skipped—not a soul in the house.”
“Suppose he were to come up behind the door and hear you talk about him like this, Northup? He’s trim you down nicely, eh?”
“Him?” asked Northup, with an eloquent jerk of his hand. “He’s a husky young brute, but it ain’t brute force that I work with.” He smiled significantly into the face of the other, and John Mark smiled in return. They understood one another perfectly.