Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

I crossed the roof and looked down into the alley. There, beneath my very eyes, crouched in the shadow of a fence, was another man waiting, tense, expectant. Did she know he was there? Had she warned me of the obvious peril at the front door to send me to my death at the back? I had no means of knowing, but this much I did know: I had saved my life by coming to the roof.

I stepped back to the front of the roof and watched the machine.

The fog thickened until it became a white pall. Lights from the windows of the apartments below sent out golden paths of light into the swirling moisture. The sound of the running motor was queerly muffled.

A curtain was raised. Out into the fog there shone a path of yellow light. The curtain was lowered and the light blotted out. Three times this was repeated. The light shone from the window of Maude Enders’ apartment. Probably a signal to let the watchers below know that I had left. If that was so she had delayed giving it, delayed nearly ten minutes. Was she on the square after all — this girl with the mole on her left hand?

Another ten minutes passed. There came the sound of a slamming door as someone got out of the machine below, clicked across the cement sidewalk, pounded up the steps, and entered the apartment house. Five minutes later and he was back out and into the machine. There came the acceleration of the motor as the car moved away, swinging slowly down the street, around the corner, and in front of the alley.

I tiptoed around the coping, following the course of the machine, watching it as it stopped at the alley.

A man got out and walked up the alley, whistling a soft signal. The man who was crouched behind the fence answered it, and then the two moved together, joined in a whispered conference, and then both got into the machine. Once more there came the sound of the motor accelerating, and then the car whined down the block, turned into the main boulevard and was lost in the traffic.

I got back to the trap door and went down the steep steps, back down the floors until I came once more to the apartment of Maude Enders.

This time I knew the right key, and I turned the lock noiselessly.

She was sitting in her chair, her chin cupped in her hands, her luminous eyes staring out into space.

“Ed!” she exclaimed as the light fell on me.

I bowed.

“Just a final good-night, and a reminder that you mustn’t forget to tell old Icy-Eyes what I said.”

“Ed,” she pleaded, her voice suddenly soft. “Ed, I swear I didn’t know there was a watcher in the alley, didn’t suspect it until after the man came up to see why you hadn’t come out; and I delayed the signal for ten minutes, Ed. Honest I did!”

I grinned at her.

“Don’t waste any time worrying about me, sister,” I told her. “No apologies necessary. I saw your delayed signal and I just dropped in on the road out to say thanks.”

Her eyes were wide this time.

“Ed, you are clever!... I can put you up here if you can stay, Ed. The streets are unsafe, and every hotel is watched.”

I bowed my thanks.

“I have work to do, Maude. Thanks all the same, but the streets are never unsafe for the Phantom Crook. Good night.”

Perhaps I was showing off a little, but half the pleasure of doing something clever is to have an appreciative audience, and this girl with the mole on her left hand knew clever work when she saw it. Then again, I wanted to satisfy myself that she had been on the square with that tip to pass out by the rear door.

There was a telephone in the lobby, and I phoned for a cab, and didn’t step out of the front door until the cab was at the curb. It took me three cabs and half an hour to get to the place I wanted to go, the house of Helen Chadwick. I hoped I’d find her up. It was the second time I’d been there, once just before our engagement had been announced.

Helen Chadwick and her mother were of the upper, upper crust. They were in the middle of the social-elect. Helen’s father had been unfortunate before he died. It was worry that killed him. Crooks held evidences of his indiscretion, and they had threatened Helen once or twice with exposure of their knowledge. It wasn’t that Helen cared for herself, but there was the memory of her father, and the failing health of her mother to be considered.

Once they had forced Helen to pass me off as her husband-to-be, and we had spent a week-end at the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Loring Kemper, the leaders of the socially elect. I had got her out of that scrape safely, and when I broke the engagement with a smile, there had been tears in the girl’s eyes. I had told her that I would come to her if danger threatened again...

I half expected the house would be dark, but it was lit up like a church. There was a late dance going on, and shiny cars were parked all around the block, cars that had chauffeurs hunched behind the wheels, dozing, nodding, shivering.

I paid off the taxi, and skipped up the steps.

A butler answered my ring.

“Miss Chadwick,” I told him crisply.

He gave me a fishy eye.

“Your card?”

“Tell her Mr. Jenkins is here, and I’ll step in while you’re telling her.”

He gave ground doubtfully, but give it he did, and I walked on into a reception room. From the other side of the house there came shrill bursts of laughter, gruff voices, the blare of an orchestra, the tinkle of dishes.

Twenty seconds and the man was back.

“Not at home, sir. Step this way, sir.”

He bowed me to the door.

As he held the front door open I took him by the collar and swung him around.

“You didn’t deliver my message. Why?”

His fishy eyes glinted a cold, hostile glare of scornful enmity.

“Miss Chadwick is never at home to crooks. I recognized you from your published pictures.”

I nodded.

“I was afraid so. I recognized you from having seen you with Squint Dugan. Published pictures — hell! You know me because you’re a crook. On your way.”

A push sent him out on the moist porch, a kick sent him the rest of the way down the stairs, the momentum skidded him across the wet sidewalk and into the gutter. Across the street a chauffeur voiced his approval by a short blast of the horn. In the darkness someone snickered. The butler got up and tried to scrape off the muddy water with the palm of his hand. His livery was a mess, and his face was smeared.

“You needn’t come back,” I told him. “Your references will be forwarded to you care of the warden at the Wisconsin penitentiary at Waupin. I believe you’re wanted there, and I intend to see that you get there.”

“What is all this?”

The remark came in a cool, impersonal voice, the sort of a voice one uses to peddlers and office boys.

I carefully closed the door and sprung the night latch. Then I turned to face the owner of that voice. She was gowned in the latest style, her bare arms and throat contrasting against the dark of her gown, her hair framing the soft curve of her oval cheek. There was a patch of rouge high on her cheeks; her lips were vivid crimson. She was a flapper, and yet there was a something else, a something of poise, of more mature responsibility about her than when I had last seen her.

“Ed!” she breathed... “Ed Jenkins!”

I grinned at her. I didn’t want any dramatics.

“H’lo, Helen. I just fired your butler. He was a crook, an ex-con, and he was spying on you.”

There were tears in her eyes, and her face had gone white beneath the rouge, but she twisted her mouth into a smile.

“Just when I had been hoping, praying that I could get in touch with you.”

I nodded.

“More trouble over those papers of your father’s?”

There was no need for an answer.

“Listen, Helen. I have got all of those papers except two. There’s no need of going into details. I wasn’t going to bother you by reporting, but was just going to trace those documents through the underworld, get ’em and destroy ’em. Two got away, and I had an idea you’d be bothered, so I looked you up.”