by Brand, Max
"How much d'you think that's worth?" asked McKeever.
"Dunno," said Ronicky. "That's good steel."
He tried the point, then he snapped it under his thumb nail and a little shiver of a ringing sound reached as far as Frederic Fernand.
Then he saw Ronicky Doone suddenly lean a little across the table, pointing toward the hand in which McKeever held the pack, ready for the deal.
McKeever shook his head and gripped the pack more closely.
"Do you suspect me of crooked work?" asked McKeever. He pushed back his chair. Fernand, studying his lieutenant in this crisis, approved of him thoroughly. He himself was in a quandary. Westerners fight, and a fight would be most embarrassing. "Do you think " began McKeever.
"I think you'll keep that hand and that same pack of cards on the table till I've had it looked over," said Ronicky Doone. "I've dropped a cold thousand to you, and you're winning it with stacked decks, McKeever."
There was a stifled oath from McKeever, as he jerked his hand back. Frederic Fernand was beginning to draw one breath of joy at the thought that McKeever would escape without having that pack, of all packs, examined, when the long dagger flashed in the hand of Ronicky Doone.
He struck as a cat strikes when it hooks the fish out of the stream he struck as the snapper on the end of a whiplash doubles back. And well and truly did that steel uphold its fame.
The dull, chopping sound of the blow stood by itself for an instant. Then McKeever, looking down in horror at his hand, screamed and fell back in his chair.
That was the instant when Frederic Fernand judged his lieutenant and found him wanting. A man who fainted in such a crisis as this was beyond the pale.
Other people crowded past him. Frightened, desperate, he pushed on. At length his weight enabled him to squeeze through the rapidly gathering crowd of gamblers.
The only nonchalant man of the lot was he who had actually used the weapon. For Ronicky Doone stood with his shoulders propped against the wall, his hands clasped lightly behind him. For all that, it was plain that he was not unarmed. A certain calm insolence about his expression told Frederic Fernand that the teeth of the dragon were not drawn.
"Gents," he was saying, in his mild voice, while his eyes ran restlessly from face to face, "I sure do hate to bust up a nice little party like this one has been, but I figure them cards are stacked. I got a pile of reasons for knowing, and I want somebody to look over them cards somebody that knows stacked cards when he sees 'em. Mostly it ain't hard to get onto the order of them being run up. I'll leave it, gents, to the man that runs this dump."
And, leaning across the table, he pushed the pack straight to Frederic Fernand. The latter set his teeth. It was very cunningly done to trap him. If he said the cards were straight they might be examined afterward; and, if he were discovered in a lie, it would mean more than the loss of McKeever it would mean the ruin of everything. Did he dare take the chance? Must he give up McKeever? The work of years of careful education had been squandered on McKeever.
Fernand looked up, and his eyes rested on the calm face of Ronicky Doone. Why had he never met a man like that before? There was an assistant! There was a fellow with steel-cold nerve worth a thousand trained McKeevers! Then he glanced at the wounded man, cowering and bunched in his chair. At that moment the gambler made up his mind to play the game in the big way and pocket his losses.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said sadly, placing the cards back on the edge of the table, "I am sorry to say that Mr. Doone is right. The pack has been run up. There it is for any of you to examine it. I don't pretend to understand. Most of you know that McKeever has been with me for years. Needless to say, he will be with me no more." And, turning on his heel, the old fellow walked slowly away, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed.
And the crowd poured after him to shake his hand and tell him of their unshakable confidence in his honesty. McKeever was ruined, but the house of Frederic Fernand was more firmly established than ever, after the trial of the night.
Chapter Twenty. Trapped!.
"Get the money," said Ronicky to Jerry Smith.
"There it is!"
He pointed to the drawer, where McKeever, as banker, had kept the money. The wounded man in the meantime had disappeared.
"How much is ours?" asked Jerry Smith.
"All you find there," answered Ronicky calmly.
"But there's a big bunch large bills, too. McKeever was loaded for bear."
"He loses the house loses it. Out in my country, Jerry, that wouldn't be half of what the house would lose for a little trick like what's been played on us tonight. Not the half of what the house would lose, I tell you! He had us trimmed, Jerry, and out West we'd wreck this joint from head to heels."
The diffident Jerry fingered the money in the drawer of the table uncertainly. Ronicky Doone swept it up and thrust it into his pocket. "We'll split straws later," said Ronicky. "Main thing we need right about now is action. This coin will start us."
In the hall, as they took their hats, they found big Frederic Fernand in the act of dissuading several of his clients from leaving. The incident of the evening was regrettable, most regrettable, but such things would happen when wild men appeared. Besides, the fault had been that of McKeever. He assured them that McKeever would never again be employed in his house. And Fernand meant it. He had discarded all care for the wounded man.
Ronicky Doone stepped to him and drew him aside. "Mr. Fernand," he said, "I've got to have a couple of words with you."
"Come into my private room," said Fernand, eager to get the fighter out of view of the rest of the little crowd. He drew Ronicky and Jerry Smith into a little apartment which opened off the hall. It was furnished with an almost feminine delicacy of style, with wide-seated, spindle-legged Louis XV. chairs and a couch covered with rich brocade. The desk was a work of Boulle. A small tapestry of the Gobelins made a ragged glow of color on the wall. Frederic Fernand had recreated an atmosphere two hundred years old.
He seated them at once. "And now, sir," he said sternly to Ronicky Doone, "you are aware that I could have placed you in the hands of the police for what you've done tonight?"
Ronicky Doone made no answer. His only retort was a gradually spreading smile. "Partner," he said at length, while Fernand was flushing with anger at this nonchalance on the part of the Westerner, "they might of grabbed me, but they would have grabbed your house first."
"That fact," said Fernand hotly, "is the reason you have dared to act like a wild man in my place? Mr. Doone, this is your last visit."
"It sure is," said Ronicky heartily. "D'you know what would have happened out in my neck of the woods, if there had been a game like the one tonight? I wouldn't have waited to be polite, but just pulled a gat and started smashing things for luck."
"The incident is closed," Fernand said with gravity, and he leaned forward, as if to rise.
"Not by a long sight," said Ronicky Doone. "I got an idea, partner, that you worked the whole deal. This is a square house, Fernand. Why was I picked out for the dirty work?"
It required all of Fernand's long habits of self control to keep him from gasping. He managed to look Ronicky Doone fairly in the eyes. What did the youngster know? What had he guessed?
"Suppose I get down to cases and name names? The gent that talked to you about me was John Mark. Am I right?" asked Ronicky.
"Sir," said Fernand, thinking that the world was tumbling about his ears, "what infernal "
"I'm right," said Ronicky. "I can tell when I've hurt a gent by the way his face wrinkles up. I sure hurt you that time, Fernand. John Mark it was, eh?"
Fernand could merely stare. He began to have vague fears that this young devil might have hypnotic powers, or be in touch with he knew not what unearthly source of information.
"Out with it," said Ronicky, leaving his chair.
Frederic Fernand bit his lip in thought. He was by no means a coward, and two alternatives presented themselves to him. One
was to say nothing and pretend absolute ignorance; the other was to drop his hand into his coat pocket and fire the little automatic which nestled there.
"Listen," said Ronicky Doone, "suppose I was to go a little farther still in my guesses! Suppose I said I figured out that John Mark and his men might be scattered around outside this house, waiting for me and Smith to come out: What would you say to that?"
"Nothing," said Fernand, but he blinked as he spoke. "For a feat of imagination as great as that I have only a silent admiration. But, if you have some insane idea that John Mark, a gentleman I know and respect greatly, is lurking like an assassin outside the doors of my house "
"Or maybe inside 'em," said Ronicky, unabashed by this gravity.
"If you think that," went on the gambler heavily, "I can only keep silence. But, to ease your own mind, I'll show you a simple way out of the house a perfectly safe way which even you cannot doubt will lead you out unharmed. Does that bring you what you want?"
"It sure does," said Ronicky. "Lead the way, captain, and you'll find us right at your heels." He fell in beside Jerry Smith, while the fat man led on as their guide.
"What does he mean by a safe exit?" asked Jerry Smith. "You'd think we were in a smuggler's cave."
"Worse," said Ronicky, "a pile worse, son. And they'll sure have to have some tunnels or something for get-aways. This ain't a lawful house, Jerry."
As they talked, they were being led down toward the cellar. They paused at last in a cool, big room, paved with cement, and the unmistakable scent of the underground was in the air.
"Here we are," said the fat man, and, so saying, he turned a switch which illumined the room completely and then drew aside a curtain which opened into a black cavity.
Ronicky Doone approached and peered into it. "How does it look to you, Jerry?" he asked.
"Dark, but good enough for me, if you're all set on leaving by some funny way."
"I don't care how it looks," said Ronicky thoughtfully. "By the looks you can't make out nothing most of the time nothing important. But they's ways of smelling things, and the smell of this here tunnel ain't too good to me. Look again and try to pry down that tunnel with your flash light, Jerry."
Accordingly Jerry raised his little pocket electric torch and held it above his head. They saw a tunnel opening, with raw dirt walls and floor and a rude framing of heavy timbers to support the roof. But it turned an angle and went out of view in a very few paces.
"Go down there with your lantern and look for the exit," said Ronicky Doone. "I'll stay back here and see that we get our farewell all fixed up."
The damp cellar air seemed to affect the throat of the fat man. He coughed heavily.
"Say, Ronicky," said Jerry Smith, "looks to me that you're carrying this pretty far. Let's take a chance on what we've got ahead of us?"
The fat man was chuckling: "You show a touching trust in me, Mr. Doone."
Ronicky turned on him with an ugly sneer. "I don't like you, Fernand," he said. "They's nothing about you that looks good to me. If I knew half as much as I guess about you I'd blow your head off, and go on without ever thinking about you again. But I don't know. Here you've got me up against it. We're going to go down that tunnel; but, if it's blind, Fernand, and you trap us from this end, it will be the worst day of your life."
"Take this passage, Doone, or turn around and come back with me, and I'll show some other ways of getting out ways that lie under the open sky, Doone. Would you like that better? Do you want starlight and John Mark or a little stretch of darkness, all by yourself?" asked Fernand.
Ronicky Doone studied the face of Fernand, almost wistfully. The more he knew about the fellow the more thoroughly convinced he was that Fernand was bad in all possible ways. He might be telling the truth now, however again he might be simply tempting him on to a danger. There was only one way to decide. Ronicky, a gambler himself, mentally flipped a coin and nodded to Jerry.
"We'll go in," he said, "but man, man, how my old scars are pricking!"
They walked into the moldy, damp air of the tunnel, reached the corner, and there the passage turned and ended in a blank wall of raw dirt, with a little apron of fallen debris at the bottom of it. Ronicky Doone walked first, and, when he saw the passage obstructed in this manner, he whirled like a flash and fired at the mouth of the tunnel.
A snarl and a curse told him that he had at least come close to his target, but he was too late. A great door was sliding rapidly across the width of the tunnel, and, before he could fire a second time, the tunnel was closed.
Jerry Smith went temporarily mad. He ran at the door, which had just closed, and struck the whole weight of his body against it. There was not so much as a quiver. The face of it was smooth steel, and there was probably a dense thickness of stonework on the other side, to match the cellar walls of the house.
"It was my fool fault," exclaimed Jerry, turning to his friend. "My fault, Ronicky! Oh, what a fool I am!"
"I should have known by the feel of the scars," said Ronicky. "Put out that flash light, Jerry. We may need that after a while, and the batteries won't last forever."
He sat down, as he spoke, cross-legged, and the last thing Jerry saw, as he snapped out the light, was the lean, intense face and the blazing eyes of Ronicky Doone. Decidedly this was not a fellow to trifle with. If he trembled for himself and Ronicky, he could also spare a shudder for what would happen to Frederic Fernand, if Ronicky got away. In the meantime the light was out, and the darkness sat heavily beside and about them, with that faint succession of inaudible breathing sounds which are sensed rather than actually heard.
"Is there anything that we can do?" asked Jerry suddenly. "It's all right to sit down and argue and worry, but isn't it foolish, Ronicky?"
"How come?"
"I mean it in this way. Sometimes when you can't solve a problem it's very easy to prove that it can't be solved by anyone. That's what I can prove now, but why waste time?"
"Have we got anything special to do with our time?" asked Ronicky dryly.
"Well, my proof is easy. Here we are in hardpan dirt, without any sort of a tool for digging. So we sure can't tunnel out from the sides, can we?"
"Looks most like we can't," said Ronicky sadly.
"And the only ways that are left are the ends."
"That's right."
"But one end is the unfinished part of the tunnel; and, if you think we can do anything to the steel door "
"Hush up," said Ronicky. "Besides, there ain't any use in you talking in a whisper, either. No, it sure don't look like we could do much to that door. Besides, even if we could, I don't think I'd go. I'd rather take a chance against starvation than another trip to fat Fernand's place. If I ever enter it again, son, you lay to it that he'll get me bumped off, mighty pronto."
Jerry Smith, after a groan, returned to his argument. "But that ties us up, Ronicky. The door won't work, and it's worse than solid rock. And we can't tunnel out the side, without so much as a pin to help us dig, can we? I think that just about settles things. Ronicky, we can't get out."
"Suppose we had some dynamite," said Ronicky cheerily.
"Sure, but we haven't."
"Suppose we find some?"
Jerry Smith groaned. "Are you trying to make a joke out of this? Besides, could we send off a blast of dynamite in a closed tunnel like this?"
"We could try," said Ronicky. "Way I'm figuring is to show you it's bad medicine to sit down and figure out how you're beat. Even if you owe a pile of money they's some satisfaction in sitting back and adding up the figures so that you come out about a million dollars on top in your dreams. Before we can get out of here we got to begin to feel powerful sure."
"But you take it straight, friend: Fernand ain't going to leave us in here. Nope, he's going to find a way to get us out. That's easy to figure out. But the way he'll get us out will be as dead ones, and then he can dump us, when he feels like it, in the river. Ain't that the simplest way of working it out?"
The teeth of Jerry Smith came together with a snap. "Then the thing for us to do is to get set and wait for them to make an attack?"
"No use waiting. When they attack it'll be in a way that'll give us no chance."
"Then you figure the same as me we're lost?"
"Unless we can get out before they make the attack. In other words, Jerry, there may be something behind the dirt wall at the end of the tunnel."
"Nonsense, Ronicky."
"There's got to be," said Ronicky very soberly, "because, if there ain't, you and me are dead ones, Jerry. Come along and help me look, anyway."
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.