“Usually a hidden ace, when the player is a good one,” I answered quickly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “then I may have a hole card, too. I know what you’re talking about now. It’s stud poker, and a good player not only has a hole card, but he had another one right next to it. How is it you say? Back to back! That’s it.”
“Enough of such nonsense!” said Sly impatiently as he grabbed her in his long, nervous arms and swept her away, his hairy hands sliding up and down her gleaming shoulder.
For several moments I watched them, and then I turned as the vivacious blonde laid down a barrage of small talk, the words running together in a stream. I didn’t feel called upon exactly to start any campaign after Ogden Sly unless it should appear that he was the one who had shot my dog, in which event…
At length the evening was over. Why I had ever consented to attend such a function was more than I knew. I realized it was merely the opening move in a campaign of some importance, and it was the fact that I could not penetrate the motives of the players as much as anything else which had caused me to become intrigued in the affair.
Lois was there when I took my leave, and suddenly, as she escorted me to the door, threw her arms around me and implanted a kiss full on my lips. It was a hard-lipped, hurried kiss, done more for ostentation than for any other purpose, and I looked hurriedly around, trying to see the one for whose benefit that move had been planned.
There were two spectators. Standing at the end of the hall, her eyes expressionless, face a calm mask, was Mrs. Lambert. She was in the shadows at the back part of the corridor, and I was not sure whether Lois knew she was there. At one of the windows which opened on to the porch I caught a hurried blur of motion as Ogden Sly drew back into the shadows. Did the girl know he was there? I had no way of telling.
Of one thing I was sure, that kiss had been for the benefit of either one or the other. I was satisfied that the girl knew of only one spectator. Either she knew her mother was watching, and took that opportunity to show her parent that she was not in love with Ogden Sly, or else, she did not know her mother was watching, but did know that Sly was posted at the window. If that were the case, I began to wonder just what was going to be the next move in the game.
I got into my roadster, with the girl’s hard-lipped kiss still tingling my mouth, and shot down the street, turned a side street, doubled back, and then slid into the shadows of some trees away from the street lights, and waited to see if I had been followed. The street seemed deserted.
I drove down to the dog hospital going slowly, thinking, letting my subconscious mind take care of the operation of the automobile. I was more interested in Bobo than in anything right then, and yet I could almost feel in my mind the psychic sweep of forces which were hurling me into the vortex of an adventure concerning which I knew but little.
All about me was the play of conflicting emotions, emotions so strong as to affect the lives of the various parties, and yet which were masked under the atmosphere of respectability. It was a strange situation, and I found myself being drawn more and more toward the girl, some impulse caused me to extend to her my liking and sympathy, and it is seldom that emotions enter into my mind when I am reasoning out a problem.
The dog was better, and for that I was thankful. His strength was coming back rapidly as his splendid system manufactured new blood to take the place of that he had lost. They told me that it would only be a few days until he would be with me once more. The news was welcome. I fancied that I would need my four-footed pal before many days had passed.
I returned to my apartment, placed the car in the garage, ascended the elevator, and fitted my latch key in the door. As I did so there sounded a heavy thud from within. The door flung open in my face and a dark figure scuttled down the corridor.
With that first sound I had thrown myself back and against the wall, prepared to resist an attack. As the door had flung open I was poised on the balls of my feet, ready for anything in the line of an unexpected offensive. What I was not prepared for, was this rushing figure which tore down the hall to the back stairway. He was fleeing, that was certain, and he had apparently foreseen my move in flattening against the wall away from the door, for he dashed madly away without even the backward look which one would give who expected to be stopped.
In one bound I jumped within the apartment. A man was on the floor, lying on his back, his eyes already glazing in death, and his hands clutching futilely at his breast, from which there protruded a hilt of a knife. In that moment I cursed myself for a fool. I should have been prepared. Ogden Sly was no man to stand idly back and allow his game to be interfered with. Seeing me at the Lambert house, he had reasoned that conflict was inevitable, that I could do him no good, and should be placed behind bars before I could do him any harm.
That is the penalty of being a crook, known to the police as such. The police wait, always ready, always anxious to hang some crime on the man who has a “record.” It had only been necessary for Sly to arrange to have some man lured to my apartment, to have him stabbed, and then to wait and let the law take its course. As a crook, known in several nations, a dozen states, I could never convince any judge or jury in the land that it had not been my hand which had darted home that heavy dagger.
Already I was satisfied that the police had been notified by a mysterious voice purporting to come from some “tenant of the building,” who desired his name withheld, that there had been the sounds of a struggle and of a man’s scream from my apartment. Already the police would be on their way to the place in a fast automobile. I was there with the dying man, a well-dressed stranger.
His lips writhed and twisted as he attempted to say some word, to give me some message, and then, as I bent over to hear what he had to say, he died. From the street without there sounded the rapid explosions of an exhaust as a police car skidded around the corner and slid to a stop before the apartment house. The echo of a siren was caught by the buildings down the street and came in through the windows, a bare, ghostly wail of a sound.
The dead man on the floor I had never seen before. The man who had rushed so madly down the hall had also been a stranger. I had not seen his face, but there had been a queer, one-sided set to his shoulders as he ran which would have attracted my attention anywhere. Also I noticed that there was a bandage about his left arm. I wondered about that bandage. There was a chance that beneath that cloth were the fang marks of a dog. If that should be so…
I had no time for speculation. The police were at the door of the house, and would be at my apartment in a matter of seconds.
I looked out of the window. The yard, three floors below, grown up with ornamental shrubbery and flowers, loomed black and forbidding, shielded from the meagre lights at the street corners by the bulk of surrounding buildings.
There was a long coil of rope in one of the closets, and I took the man and also the mg upon which he had fallen, tied the rope about his shoulders in one of those knots which are known to sailors and which will hold as long as there is a tension upon it, yet break loose when the rope is slackened and given a shake or two. I rolled a bed against the window, giving me a section of the brass bedpost about which to make a turn of the line for a snubber, raised the body to the window, and lowered it into the yard.
As soon as the rope slackened I gave it a shake, slipped loose the knot and then drew back the rope. Sixty seconds later there was an authoritative rap at my door, and I opened it to confront a squad of uniformed men. I was in dressing robe and slippers.
“There’s a rumor of a fight up here. What’s the row?” asked the man who stood in the lead, his face tense and white. Quite evidently he had heard enough about Ed Jenkins to make him fear for his own safety. He had four men with him, and they were all rather subdued for policemen. Their attitude gave me my clue.