“Ah, that’s better,” he breathed. “I thought I could break through that calm. You have played into my hands. Jenkins shall die, but, before he dies, he will know that the woman he loves has been sold to a Mexican hell — and that I have the money.”
“No, no” screamed the girl again. “You’re killing me. It’s worse than death. Help! Help!”
Something in the shrill carrying power of that voice seemed to disturb the man behind the desk. It was as though he sensed that the words were a signal for help, a cry that was not being wasted. He stirred uneasily.
The other men in that room, coarse, callous crooks, men who regarded women as tools and chattels, were gloating over the suffering of the girl. They had ranged themselves in a corner where they might watch her face, where they might be between her and the door. The girl with the mole lay on her back on the couch, her feet in such a position that only Helen and I could see what they were doing.
Icy Eyes shifted his position and the girl on the couch gave her legs a graceful twist, the telephone receiver dropped back into place, and Helen Chadwick became silent.
“Shut up,” growled Icy-Eyes, his hard eyes showing a look of suspicion. “This house is pretty soundproof, but you can keep your yells to yourself. I wanted to hear you scream, but I’ve had enough to satisfy me. Another yell and you’ll have a little taste of what’s coming later on.”
He turned to the three men who were standing ready to do his hell bidding.
He opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped, his eyes on the doorway.
A man with bloody features was standing on the threshold, one of the men I had knocked out.
“A spy in the house,” he said weakly, “a man was peering in through the grille. We caught him, but he broke away and got out the back some way. The wires are dead.”
This time there was expression and to spare on the face of the man at the desk.
“What! Another spy!” he shouted, glancing at the bound man on the floor, his face working in a strange mixture of rage and fear. “What is all this? Is the house full of spies? And you let him escape! Fool!”
The level tones of Helen Chadwick broke in on him.
“That will have been Ed Jenkins,” she remarked casually, as though she were speaking of the weather, “and you can prepare to die. I should have known better than to doubt him.”
There was a calm certainty in her words, something more than a threat. It was as though she spoke a prophecy.
Actually the big man quailed.
“He is a devil,” he muttered, and it was plain to be seen that at last his nerve was shaken.
“Who is now on guard at the station?”
Silence while the men exchanged glances.
“You called me to come down and help you,” ventured one of the men, “an’ I guess nobody ain’t gone back up.”
Icy-Eyes muttered a foul oath, a soul-shriveling combination of degraded words.
“Get back up there, and get ready. You’ll pay for being slack on the job later. In the meantime keep your gun trained on the door, and shoot the first man that opens it unless he’s one you know.”
The man he had addressed slunk out of the door. He would go down the corridor, enter the room below, climb the stairs and raise an alarm when he saw me. In the meantime I was unarmed, and there was no way of escape. Damn Icy-Eyes, why did he delay? Why didn’t he walk into the trap I had baited?
The door below slammed open, and I could hear footsteps on the floor, hands groping on the stairs. I had flattened myself against the base of the grille, trying to block as little as possible of the light which was coming from the den below where Icy-Eyes, confident in his own power and security, still wanted to gloat over his treasure, to make his victims wait in the horror of their suspense.
“I’ll take a look at this stuff,” he said, “and then I’ll do a little acid painting, and we’ll get started. We are going to leave this place. It has served its purpose.”
With that he reached for the box which contained the fake crown, opened it, and began to unscrew the little bolts which fastened the crown in place. Across the room the two guards watched him with inquisitive eyes, occasionally flicking a hungry glance toward the two girls.
I turned, crouched, gathered my hands beneath my chin, saw the top of a man’s head coming above the floor of the platform, and shot forward.
I had timed myself to a nicety. The head and neck had just appeared when my swooping hands shot out on a level with the floor and sought his neck.
There was a choking, gurgling cry, a smothered exclamation, and then my gripping hands had locked on the man’s throat. He tore at my hands, and finally, flung himself from the steps, throwing the whole burden of his weight upon my wrists. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. My muscles could not hold that hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight at arm’s length, and the tortured tendons weakened.
There was only one thing to be done, and I did it with what was almost a prayer. I threw myself forward, still retaining my grip, and we plunged headlong into the darkness of the drop below.
There was not enough space for us to turn in the air. I held my arms out before me like a driver holds his hands, and between my fingers was the neck of the crook. We fell in that position, and I thudded to the floor atop him. I had felt his head strike first, had felt the bones beneath my fingers give a twist, a dull snap, and I knew I had no more to fear from that man.
Quickly, I dashed up the ladder to the platform again.
Icy-Eyes had loosened the bolts and was on the point of lifting the crown from the box.
“What was that noise?” he bellowed, his pasty face turned toward the grille.
I disguised my voice as much as possible.
“Fell off the stairs and knocked out a tooth,” I said.
He cursed again.
“Of all the damned incompetency. You fellows are going to have an accounting for all the blunders you’ve pulled today.”
With that he lifted the crown from the box, his hands cupped about the gold rim, in exactly the position a man’s hands would naturally assume in lifting such an ornament.
And then he yelled, yelled and jumped back.
“I’ve been stabbed,” he shouted, holding his bleeding hand high in the air.
A trickle of blood was coming down from the palm. And then his eyes caught the flutter of paper within the box. Without thinking he read the few words it contained aloud.
“You have fifteen minutes to live. Nothing can save you. This pays you in full of account.
And then the coward of the man came out. He saw the ingenious construction of that crown, saw that when it was lifted from the box a hollow needle sprang out on each of the four sides and that a greenish fluid was squirted through the hollow openings. One of these needles had caught him full in the palm.
“Quick!” he shouted, tying a handkerchief about his wrist, trying to choke off the circulation of the blood. “I have been poisoned — I must get to a doctor. Bring that stuff, those jewels, get the things in the safe. I will take them with me. Hurry!”
Bah! What a fool he was for all of his boasted intelligence. A certain amount of cunning I granted him, yes. He could sit behind his desk with a score of crooks to do his bidding and direct their activities. He was ruthless and cruel enough to inspire a certain amount of deference in his underlings. All of these things had helped to give him power, to make him feel that he was invincible; but it is one thing to sit behind a desk with armed guards watching to insure a man’s safety, and quite another to be out in the world without an organization of helpers, fighting society singlehanded.