Unwittingly I had sent a good man to his death.
In baiting the trap with myself I had discounted the danger. I was always in danger. Daily, almost hourly, I faced death, danger from a hundred sources, and I had grown accustomed to it, had learned to take care of myself. As trap bait I took my gamble with my eyes open, and the resourcefulness I had developed from years of experience had quickened my perceptions, given me self-reliance and confidence…
Kemper turned from the telephone.
“It’s Riggs. A truck got out of control at the station, backed up on the sidewalk and crushed him against the side of the building. The chauffeur was also injured. What makes it particularly tragic was that Riggs’ father had just got off the train, and was in time to see the whole accident, although Riggs had no chance for even a word with his father before he died — killed instantly.”
Mrs. Kemper’s face went white. Her tongue licked her lips, and her eyes showed the anguish she did not betray in words.
“Such a shame! You’ll have the father come here, of course.”
He nodded.
“So I’ve instructed them at the emergency hospital,” he said, and then turned again to the telephone to set in motion the machinery which would rush the best of surgeons and nurses to the bedside of his chauffeur.
I kept my eyes upon the cigarette smoke. Over that little gathering had swept the hush of death, and I was forced to look down the end of my glowing cigarette and pretend that my emotions were merely those of keen sympathy at the tragedy. In reality I was anxious to get away, to start the action.
I sensed that sunup tomorrow morning would either find me dead or victorious, and I did not propose to let any grass grow upon my trail, now that I had been given a definite clue. My quarry was already within the trap, was nibbling at the bait itself.
Riggs’ father seemed pathetic in his hopelessness. He had journeyed half across the continent to see his son, and death had snatched that son away from him at the very moment of meeting. He was a wisp of a man with watery gray eyes, and a certain helplessness of carriage, motion and thought. He seemed dazed, bewildered, preoccupied in his sorrow, yet seemingly unable to realize that the Kempers were only helping him to get himself accustomed to the situation. One would have thought that, by some subtle process of the aged mind, he had adopted the Kempers as his children to take the place of the one he had lost.
Mr. Kemper was tact and sympathy itself, and made the arrangements personally for the funeral and burial. Also he made a swift investigation of the circumstances, and I fancied there was something of cold-blooded revenge in the calm manner in which he went about his investigation.
The investigation was startlingly simple. It stopped almost where it began. The truck had, through some mechanical fault which could not have been anticipated, locked itself in reverse and the driver had really been blameless — according to the reports which were submitted by telephone to Mr. Kemper, through the attorneys who had placed investigators on the case.
It was rather a hectic evening, what with the necessity of soothing the elder Riggs, making arrangements for the funeral, and having the accident investigated. We turned in about eleven-thirty, and, before we retired, Loring Kemper took me for a stroll through the grounds.
I noticed that there were two watchmen on duty, patrolling the grounds, keeping an eye on the house. They had their orders, and they knew everyone within the house. A stranger was to be shot on sight unless he halted at once at their hail.
To blind him, I nodded my approval, and congratulated him on his foresight and preparation — Bah! It is ever human nature to overlook the obvious!
I rolled into bed and turned out my light, and then I rolled out on the other side, having arranged the pillows beneath the covers so that they showed a general outline of a sleeper. The double-locked bag was fastened to the bed by a thin, steel chain, a chain which caught the reflected light which came through the window, and glittered and shimmered.
I hid within a closet from which, through a small crack in the opening of the door, I could see the general lay of the land, and keep the bed under observation.
An hour passed and the house settled down into a deep quiet. Strain my ears as I would, I could not hear a sound. From within the room there came a faint glitter where the chain caught the reflection of a distant street light. It was a well-made house with hardwood floors, and one would hardly expect a creaky board, yet there was something tangible about the silence of that house. It was the silence of a grave, a deep, absolute silence.
And so I crouched, muscles strained, waiting, watching and listening — always listening.
And then, suddenly, I noticed that I could no longer detect the glitter of the chain. Could the light have been extinguished? No. It was still there. I could see the gleam of it through the window, yet the chain had ceased to glitter and there had not been a sound.
At that instant there came one sound, and only one, — a deep “clink,” then silence. However, I knew now what was happening. That sound had been made when a pair of heavy nippers had cut their way through the slender steel chain.
Again there was utter, absolute silence. The trap was ready to be sprung. The prey was inside, and it only remained to plan out the rest of the campaign — yet I could see nothing, could hear no sound.
Then a shadow came between me and the window, a dark something which blotted out the light, a human being moving noiselessly through the gloom of the room. I watched, breathless, tense, muscles ready. There was hardly the faintest motion from that blot. As smoothly, gradually, and imperceptibly as the disc of moon rises above the gold-rimmed hills in the east, the shadow was stealing across the lighted square of that window; and then I knew why I had heard no sound. The intruder was one of those men whose muscles are so well trained, so smooth and flexible, that he can move with infinite slowness. There was no sudden jerk of motion, no faint scratch or shuffle as a muffled shoe slid over the floor, no faint sound of garments brushing against a chair. The reason there were none of these sounds was because the man was moving an inch at a time, slowly, cautiously, and absolutely noiselessly.
It would be difficult to follow such a man. Trained as I was in the art of stealing about in the night shadows, I could hardly expect to trail such a thief and not betray myself in some way. However, I, too, was a master of stealth, and, matching my caution with his own, I stole forth from the closet an inch at a time.
So we went from the room, down the corridor, and stairs, two grim shadows, engaged in a duel of life and death, pursuer and pursued, and both moving at a snail’s pace through the surrounding darkness.
I could not be sure that the man was ahead, that he had not stepped to one side and allowed me to go past, nor could I be sure that I would not stumble upon him, that my gait was not too fast and would run me up on him in the dark. All I had to guide me was the pace he had taken when I saw him slip past the window, and I knew the route he must follow to the lower floor. After that I would have to trust to luck to give me a lead, or else rely entirely upon my knowledge of crookery. I dared not be too slow. Disastrous as it might be, I must be too swift rather than too slow. To let this man get away in the dark would be equivalent to losing my life and the happiness of Helen Chadwick.
And then there came a break in my favor.
It was no longer a noiseless darkness. The slipping, sliding sounds of stockinged feet on the floor could be heard as the man made for the kitchen. Evidently he was now sacrificing everything to speed, and I followed in the same manner, seeking to keep pace with him.