After that I heard them checking things over. It had taken them more than an hour to rig the death trap to their liking, and they had been painfully careful in the construction of each detail. They both knew that their safety depended upon my death, and they knew that I was bound to return to that room, sooner or later. Now that the idea had occurred to them, they realized that I would attempt the removal of those damning fingerprints from the safe before morning.
At length the light switch clicked off, and I could hear their voices from the hallway as they put the finishing touches upon the death trap. Then there sounded steps on the stairs, a door slammed, and the house became silent.
I waited an hour and then slipped stealthily out of the room. I dared not press the light switch, but relied upon my pocketflash, and I kept the beam of that shaded as far as possible.
A hurried survey showed that I was in a veritable death trap. The bathroom door was nailed shut, nailed from the outside. The window was nailed down and it would take considerable time to remove the nails, and the removal would be accompanied with as much noise as though I shattered the glass. Nor did the window offer any great hope of escape. It had been nailed shut to prevent my placing a ladder against the side of the house and entering by that manner. There was a sheer drop of some thirty feet from that window, and a cement courtyard loomed beneath.
As for the door into the hallway, it stood invitingly open, and it was a veritable door of death. In constructing their death trap they had done a better job than they knew at the time. Not only would it be impossible to get in that door without springing the trap, but it would be impossible to get out. They had used a fine wire, and the slightest touch upon that wire would discharge the hair-trigger shotgun which was so placed as to spray the entire door with buckshot — and that gun was out in the hall.
In building a death trap to kill Ed Jenkins when he came into the room, they had unwittingly constructed a trap which would kill him when he tried to leave the room.
I completed my inspection, shrugged my shoulders, and turned to the safe. With the blade of my knife I scraped the surface free of every fingerprint. The small box I treated the same way, and then, lest there should be anything I had missed, I rubbed both the safe and the box thoroughly with my pocket-handkerchief.
That much was finished. I had completed the task which they knew I must accomplish, which they had determined should mean my death.
Then I turned to the trap once more, and, as I studied it, my rage mounted against the human fiends who had sought to frame a crime on Helen Chadwick, and had willed that I should die when I tried to rescue her from their clutches. I determined that these men should not escape punishment. True, they were clothed with power, shielded by the so-called majesty of the law, while I was a crook, an outlaw who was frowned down by society. A jury or a judge would laugh me out of court if I should use the channels of justice to redress my wrongs. A crook seek the protection of the law? The very idea was ludicrous. Who would believe my testimony? I would be a joke. The newspapers would feature me as the prize comedian of the day.
No. It was up to me to handle my own justice, to be my own court, my own judge, jury, executioner.
I stepped to the desk, looked up the residence number of Bob Garret, and breathed the number into the instrument.
I could tell from the sound of the detective’s voice that he had not been asleep. He had been waiting, waiting for news of his trap.
One of the most valuable gifts which I have received from nature has been a natural talent for mimicry. Let me hear a voice once or twice and I can imitate it after a fashion, imitate it well enough to get by under favorable circumstances. And the booming voice of Paul Boardman was an easy one to mimic, particularly when that voice would naturally be blurred with excitement.
“Quick, Bob. He came in, walked into the trap and is dead as a mackerel. Get the police and then hurry over, help me see it through.”
“It worked then!” shrieked Garret into the telephone. “I tell you, Boardman, I feared that crook. There was something almost supernatural about his abilities.”
“Yeah,” I growled in my best imitation of Boardman’s heavy accents. “Well, you don’t need to fear him now. He’s croaked right. But hurry over here. I’m up in the study and I’ve kept the servants out of it. You’ll find the whole place quiet. I’m a bit nervous about the police — the Chief, you know. Telephone for a squad, and then hurry on. Come right into the study as soon as you get here.”
Garret laughed.
“Say, to hell with the Chief. And why should the police worry you? You were within your rights, a crook in your own house, you know. Buck up. This strain’s got you unnerved. I couldn’t sleep myself. I’m coming right over. You’re in the study now?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I’m using the study phone. Hurry!” and hung up.
For perhaps fifteen minutes I sat there in the darkness, the plate-holder with its precious contents buttoned under my coat. Almost anything might happen now, and, as far as possible, I was ready for anything that could happen. There could be no escape from that room until those slender wires across the door had been broken. So ingeniously were they arranged that even the slight pull a man would make on them in trying to break or cut them would discharge the gun. I could only sit within that death trap and wait.
There sounded the rapid throb of a motor. Tires screeched across the pavement as a machine skidded to a stop. Steps dashed up to the front door, and then, more cautiously, I could hear the tread of feet on the front stairs, down the corridor.
“Boardman?”
There was almost suspicion in the voice as Garret paused before the dark doorway.
“Come in, Bob,” I boomed, imitating Boardman’s heavy voice. “Don’t touch the light. I’m watching a shadow who’s hiding over behind the hedge. Come over here and peek out the window.”
Garret didn’t even hesitate. He was so relieved to think Ed Jenkins was dead that he could hardly speak.
“We’ll get him, too. Say, I’m glad we got Ed Jenkins. I somehow had a hunch he’d get me....”
The rest of the sentence was lost forever.
There was a double, spitting stream of ruddy, stabbing flame, a terrific roar — and a body pitched heavily to the floor.
I ducked back into the closet, as running steps sounded from the corridor below. An electric flashlight shot upon the sprawled, twitching body, and then Boardman was in the room, chuckling.
He turned on the lights.
“Got him, by George! Got the Phantom Crook at last...”
His deep voice trailed off into a throaty gurgle. I could hear him gasp, stagger over to the form on the floor and then slump into a chair.
“Oh, my God! My God! My God!” he moaned, over and over. “Oh, what shall I do? How could it have happened?”
For ten or fifteen seconds he moaned to himself and then his eyes must have fallen on the safe.
“What!” he yelled. “The fingerprints are gone!”
And just then there sounded the wail of a siren, the roaring exhaust of a police car, and heavy steps began pounding up the walk. The police had arrived in response to Garret’s orders.
If Boardman hadn’t gone to the door to let them in I’d have walked out and wished him a good evening. His spirit was broken, his nerve gone, and I had nothing to fear from him right then. I could have walked out and twisted his nose with impunity.
However, there was no need. The thought of the police caused him to awake to the necessities of the situation, and he fairly leaped from the chair and sprinted down the stairs.