“Get her out of here. Send her home. We’ve got the trumps in our hand after all. It’s simple.”
Bob Garret could hardly speak without stuttering, so eager was he to get the words out. His voice rose to a shrill pitch which was almost hysterical. “Get her away. Have the police take her home. Jenkins will be dead before morning!”
“Are you crazy?” It was Boardman’s rumble. “Jenkins has shown he can outwit you at any stage of the game. We may get him, but it’ll be a long, hard chase.”
I could hear Bob Garret’s feet as they pattered on the floor. So eager was he, so excited, that he could hardly contain himself.
“I tell you I’ve got it. It’s simple, too. It’s the very simplicity of the thing that makes it so certain. We’ve got the trumps in our hands and we’ve been so foolish we haven’t realized it. Send the girl home, and be sure we keep a police guard about her house. Don’t let her get out.”
Boardman was getting interested.
“Shall we have her telephone disconnected?”
“No. No. Listen, and do as I say. When you hear what I’ve got on my chest you’ll see I’m right... Here, wait a minute...”
There was tense silence for a moment, and then I heard Garret’s voice shrilling a number into the telephone. I had noticed the instrument which set on the study desk, and I recognized the number as police headquarters.
Garret got the photographic department, left instructions that a man was to be sent the first thing in the morning to photograph the fingerprints on the safe, then slammed the receiver back on the hook.
Something in his manner had convinced Boardman, for I could hear them escorting the girl to the door, instructing the policeman who waited without to see that she went to her house and did not leave.
Within the closet I tensed my muscles, made sure my heel was on the plate-holder.
Probably Garret had reasoned it out that I was hiding some place in the building. If so, I would have to give him credit for more intelligence than I had originally figured. Perhaps he knew that I was hiding in the closet. Then there would be but one thing for me to do, to smash the plate and fight it out, trying to rush them before they could gather their forces.
They dared not let the police in to hear any conversation which might take place between us. No. Their play would be to enter the closet with drawn weapons and riddle me with bullets before I could say a word. They could always square themselves before the public. After all, I was a known crook. If they should find me in the closet, what more natural than that I should resist arrest, perhaps try to kill them? They could concoct a pretty story, all right.
Very well, I would go close to the closet door. If they came to it I would meet them more than half way. They would find no cringing, crouching figure hiding behind the clothes, a man whom they could shoot down with impunity. They would find me charging forth to meet them, and, if I could possess myself of one of their weapons... well, we would wait and see. They had me in a corner, and the happiness of Helen Chadwick was at stake. I could fancy no more sacred altar upon which to sacrifice my life.
The door into the hall closed.
I could hear the rasp of the key in the lock.
Upon the stairs sounded the descending heavy tread of the policeman, the light steps of Helen Chadwick.
Within the room I could hear the two men approach the closet door, and I lowered my shoulders, took a deep breath... and then I relaxed.
They were not coming to the door. Garret was speaking, the words fairly tumbling out of his mouth.
“Can’t you see it? He’s protecting her. He must have been concealed in the bathroom all of the time. He knows of the fingerprints on the safe. He stole the plate, took another one of us — but he’s not after us. He’s trying to protect the girl. He’s bound to get in touch with her tonight. Probably he’ll use the telephone. She’ll tell him we’re going to photograph the fingerprints in the morning... But he won’t even need to telephone her. He’s a clever crook, and he knows of those fingerprints. He’ll figure we’ll wait for daylight. I tell you, Boardman, it’s a cinch. Ed Jenkins is going to return to this safe tonight. He’ll come back to remove those fingerprints. Some time tonight he’s going to come through that door!”
There was silence for a moment.
After all, Garret had doped things out right. He should have carried his reasoning a step farther and known that I had never left the house. For a moment I tensed myself with apprehension. Perhaps Boardman would begin where Garret had left off and make the logical deduction. If so, he would know that I would never have fled from the house while there remained those fingerprints on the safe. Regardless of the cost to myself, I would have removed that evidence.
But Boardman was so swept away with Garret’s idea that he failed to add to it.
“Great smoke, Garret, you’re right!”
“Sure I’m right. I know him and I know his type. It’s only for us to arrange to kill him when he comes back.”
Boardman rumbled in his throat.
“Wait a minute. I’ve got an idea to add to yours,” he said, and then became silent.
Once more I listened in an agony of apprehension, wondering whether they would figure out the real situation. They were on the very threshold of the correct conclusion. It only remained for them to add the two and two and get the four.
And then Boardman’s heavy chuckle sounded to me in the darkness of the closet.
“Well?”
There was a note of impatience in Garret’s voice.
“Just leave the front door open when you go out,” boomed Boardman. “Jenkins will be watching the house, waiting for you to go. You can walk as though you were wrapped up in thought, and leave the front door open. We’ll nail up the door through the bathroom and nail the window shut. That’ll leave just one entrance for Jenkins to use in coming into this room. That entrance’ll be the door into the hall, and we’ll leave that door partially open.”
“Well, I still don’t see what you’re driving at.”
Again Boardman chuckled, and there was something in the supreme self-satisfaction of that chuckle that made me long to get my hands on his throat.
“I’ll arrange a gun in the hall, a shotgun. It’ll be up out of the way, and there’ll be a fine wire stretched across the door, stretched back and forth, up and down. When anyone tries to go through that door there’ll be a charge of buckshot sprayed into him.
“That’ll simplify matters. You go home and I’ll go to bed. We’ll say we left this man-trap because we knew a desperate criminal was seeking to murder me, and that this criminal expected I would be sleeping in the study.”
“It’ll be a cinch. No one can accuse us of framing Ed Jenkins and killing him. He’ll be killed while he’s walking into my house in the dead of night, apparently seeking to murder me because I caught Helen Chadwick trying to get into my safe. It’s an iron-clad idea.”
I heard Garret’s hand whacked down on Boardman’s shoulders.
There followed excited whispers, surreptitious chuckles, the scraping of chairs. Then, after a bit, there came the sound of pounding, as nails were driven home.