"Yeah, dot is true," Kuhlmann said at length. "He gets plenty money—plenty enough to split t'ree-four ways." There was a superfluous elaboration of the theme in that last phrase which Papulos did not like. "But dot ain't all of it. You hear vot Heimie says. Ven they got him in the house he says to Morrie: 'I came here to kill you.' An' he talks about justice. Vot is dot for?"
"De guy is nuts" explained Heimie peevishly, as if the continued inability of his audience to accept and be content with that obvious solution were beginning to bother him.
Kuhlmann glanced at him and shrugged his great shoulders.
"Der guy is not nuts vot can shoot Irboll right in the court house und get avay," he exploded mightily. "Der guy is not nuts vot can find out in one hour dot Morrie has kidnapped Viola Inselheim, und vot can get some fool to take him straight to the house vhere Morrie has der kid. Der guy is not nuts vot can pull out a knife in dot room und kill Morrie, und vot can pull out a gun from nowhere und shoot Eddie Voelsang and shoot his vay past four-five men out of the house mit the kid!"
There was a chorus of sycophantic agreement; and Heimie Felder muttered sulkily under his breath. "I heard him talkin'," he protested to his injured soul. "De guy is——"
"Nuts!" snarled an unsympathetic listener; and Kuhlmann's big fist crashed on the table, making the glasses dance.
"This is no time for your squabbling!" he roared suddenly. "It is you dot is nuts—all of you! In von day der Saint has killed Irboll and Morrie and Eddie Voelsang und taken twenty t'ousand dollars of our money. Und you sit there, all of you fools, and argue of vether he is nuts, vhen you should be asking who is it dot he kills next?"
A fresh silence settled on the room as the truth of his words sank home; a silence that prickled with the distorted terrors of the Unknown. And in that silence a knock sounded on the door.
"Come in!" shouted Kuhlmann and reached again for the bottle.
The door opened, and the face of the guard whose post was behind the grille of the street door appeared. His features were white and pasty, and the hand which held a scrap of pasteboard at his side trembled.
"Vot it is?" Kuhlmann demanded irritably.
The man held out the card.
"Just now the bell rang," he babbled. "I opened the grille, an' all I can see is a hand, holdin' this. I had to take it, an' while I'm starin' at it the hand disappears. When I saw what it was I got the door open quick, but all I can see outside is the usual sort of people walkin' past. I thought you better see what he gave me, Dutch."
There was a whine of pleading in the doorkeeper's voice; but Kuhlmann did not answer at once.
He was staring, with pale blue eyes gone flat and frozen, at the card he had snatched from the man's shaking hand. On it was a childishly sketched figure surmounted by a symbolical halo; and underneath it was written, as if in direct answer to the question he had been asking: "Dutch Kuhlmann is next."
* * *
Presently he returned his gaze to the doorkeeper's face and only the keenest study would have discovered any change in its bleak placidity. He threw the card down on the table for the others to crowd over, and hitched a cigar from the row which protruded from his upper vest pocket. He bit the end from the cigar and spat it out, without changing the direction of his eyes.
"Come here, Joe," he said almost affectionately; and the man took an uneasy step forward. "You vas a goot boy, Joe."
The doorkeeper licked his lips and grinned sheepishly; and Kuhlmann lighted a match.
"It vas you dot lets der Saint in here last night, vasn't it?"
"Well, Dutch, it was like this. This guy rings the bell an' asks for Fay, an' I tells him Fay ain't arrived yet but he can wait for her if he wants to ——"
"Und so you lets him in to vait inside, isn't it?"
"Well, Dutch, it was like this. The guy says maybe he can get a drink while he's waiting, an' he looks okay to me, anyone can see he ain't a dick, an' somehow I ain't thinkin' about the Saint——"
"So vot are you thinking about, Joe?" asked Kuhlmann genially.
The doorkeeper shifted his feet.
"Well, Dutch, I'm thinkin' maybe this guy is some sucker that Fay is stringin' along. Say, all I do is stand at that door an' let people in an' out, an' I don't know everything that goes on. So I figures, well, there's plenty of the boys inside, an' this guy couldn't do nothing even if he does get tough, an' if he is a sucker that they're stringin' along it won't be so good for me if I shut the door an' send him away——"
"Und so you lets him in, eh?"
"Yeah, I lets him in. You see——"
"Und so you lets him in, even after you been told all der time dot nobody don't get let in here vot you don't know, unless he comes mit one or two of the boys. Isn't dot so?"
"Well, Dutch—-"
Kuhlmann puffed at his cigar till the tip was a circle of solid red.
"How much does he give you, Joe?" he asked jovially, as if he were sharing a ripe joke with a bosom friend.
The man gulped and swallowed. His mouth was half open, and a sudden horrible understanding dilated the pupils of his eyes as he stared at the beaming mountain of fat in the chair.
"That's a lie!" he screamed suddenly. "You can't frame me like that! He didn't give me anything—I never saw him before——"
"Come here, Joe," said Kuhlmann soothingly.
He reached out and grasped the man's wrist, drawing him towards his chair rather like an elderly uncle with a reluctant schoolboy. His right hand moved suddenly; and the doorkeeper jerked in his grasp with a choking yell as the red-hot tip of Kuhlmann's cigar ground into his cheek.
Nobody else moved. Kuhlmann released the man and laughed richly, brushing a few flakes of ash from his knee. He inspected his cigar, struck a match, and relighted it.
"You're a goot boy, Joe," he said heartily. "Go and vait outside till I send for you."
The man backed slowly to the door, one hand pressed to his scorched cheek. There was a wide dumb horror in his eyes, but he said nothing. None of the others looked at him—they might have been a thousand miles away, ignoring his very existence on the same planet as themselves. The door closed after him; and Kuhlmann glanced round the other faces at the table.
"I'm afraid we are going to lose Joe," he said; and a sudden lump of pure grief caught in his throat as he realized, apparently for the first time, what that implied.
Papulos fingered his glass nervously. His fingers trembled, and a little of the amber fluid spilled over the rim of the glass and ran down over his thumb. He stared straight ahead at Kuhlmann, realizing at that moment what a narrow margin separated him from the same attention as the doorkeeper had received.
"Wait a minute, Dutch," he said abruptly. Every other eye in the room veered suddenly towards him, and under their cold scrutiny he had to make an effort to steady his voice. He plunged on in a spurt of unaccountable panic. "They's no use rubbin' out a guy for a mistake. If he tried to cross us it'd be a different thing, but we don't know that it wasn't just like he said. What the hell, anyone's liable to slip up——"
Papulos knew he had made a mistake. Kuhlmann's faded blue gaze turned towards him almost introspectively.
"What's it matter whether he crossed us or made a mistake?" demanded another member of the conference, somewhere on Papulos's left. "The result's the same. He screwed up the deal. We can't afford to let a guy get away with that. We can't take a chance on him."
Papulos did not look round. Neither did Kuhlmann; but Kuhlmann nodded slowly, thoughtfully, staring at Papulos all the time. Thoughts that Papulos had frantically tried to turn aside were germinating, growing up, in that slow, methodical Teutonic brain; Papulos could watch them creeping up to the surface of speech, inexorably as a rising flood, and felt a sick emptiness in his stomach. His own words had shifted the focus to himself; but he knew that even without that rash intervention he could not have been passed over.