“But, I can’t!” protested Birdie Lee. “I wouldn’t hand you anything like that, Slimmy—you know that, Slimmy. I—”
“Open it! And open it—quick!” Slimmy Jack’s hand was wrenching at his side pocket.
“But, I tell you, I can’t, Slimmy!” cried Birdie Lee, almost piteously. “It’s queered me up there in the pen. I”—he was rising to his feet—“Slimmy—for God’s, sake—what are you doing—you—”
There was a flash, the roar of the report, a swaying form, a revolver clattering to the floor—and with a crash Slimmy Jack pitched forward and lay motionless.
Then silence.
It had come without warning, in the winking of an eye, and for a moment it seemed to Jimmie Dale that he could not grasp the full significance of what had happened—that Slimmy Jack, his sleeve catching on the hinge of the safe as he had finally succeeded in jerking his revolver from his pocket, had, a grim, ironical trick of fate, accidentally shot himself! Mechanically, automatically, Jimmie Dale’s hands went to his pockets and produced his own flashlight and revolver—but he did not move. His eyes now were on Birdie Lee, who, like a man dazed and terror-stricken, had lurched back against the safe, the flashlight that dangled in his hand sweeping queer, aimless patches of light about the floor.
Still silence—only the uproar from the dance hall that would have drowned out to those below the sound of the revolver shot. Then Birdie Lee staggered forward, and knelt beside the prostrate form on the floor. He stood up again presently, swaying unsteadily on his feet, turning his head wildly about, now this way, now that. And then his whisper, broken, hoarse, quavered through the room:
“He’s dead. My God—he’s—he’s dead.”
“Drop that flashlight!” Jimmie Dale’s voice rang cold, imperative. “Drop it!“ And, sweeping the hangings aside, the ray of his own light suddenly full upon Birdie Lee, he leaped forward.
With a low, terrified cry, the other let the flashlight fall as though from nerveless fingers, and shrank back against the safe.
“Now put your hands above your head!” directed Jimmie Dale curtly.
The man obeyed.
Dark, frightened eyes stared out at Jimmie Dale from behind the mask that covered Birdie Lee’s face. Swiftly, deftly, Jimmie Dale felt over the other’s clothing for a weapon. There was none. Then, himself in darkness, the blinding light in Birdie Lee’s face, he pulled off the other’s mask, and with a grim, quick touch of his revolver muzzle traced out the white, pulsing, triangular scar on the man’s forehead.
“So you’re up to your old tricks again, are you, Birdie?” he inquired coldly. “Five years up the river wasn’t enough for you—eh?”
The man drew himself up suddenly, and, squaring his shoulders, made as though to speak—and then, with a swift, hopeless gesture, turned his back, and, leaning over the top of the safe, buried his head in his arms.
A strange smile touched Jimmie Dale’s lips. He stooped down, picked up the revolver from the floor, slipped it into his pocket, bent over Slimmy Jack for an instant to assure himself that the man was dead—then stepping back to the safe, he laid his hand on the ex-convict’s shoulder.
“Birdie,” he said quietly, “could you open this safe if you wanted to?”
The man swung sharply around, the prison pallor of his face a pitiful, deathlike colour in the flashlight’s rays.
“Who are you?” he asked thickly.
“A friend perhaps—if you can open that safe,” Jimmie Dale answered.
A puzzled look crept into Birdie’s eyes.
“W-what do you mean?” he stammered.
“I mean that I want the proof that you are straight,” Jimmie Dale said softly. “I’ve been here in the room all the time. I want to know whether you were stalling on Slimmy Jack, or not. And I want to know, if you were stalling, how you came to be here with him.”
“That’s a queer spiel,” said Birdie Lee, in a troubled way. “I thought at first you were a bull—but you don’t talk like one. Mabbe you’re playin’ with me; but, whether you are or not, I guess it won’t make much difference what I say. You couldn’t help me if you wanted to now—with him dead there”—he jerked his head toward the form on the floor.
“Tell me, anyhow,” insisted Jimmie Dale quietly.
Birdie’s hand lifted and swept across his eyes.
“Well, all right,” he said, after a moment; “I’ll tell you. Me and Slimmy used to work together all the time in Chicago and out West after I left New York, and until I came back here one day and pulled one alone and got sent up for it. Well, to-day, when they let me out of Sing Sing, Slimmy had come on from Chicago and was waitin’ for me. He had a deal all fixed in Chicago that we was to pull together, a big one, and this little one here was to keep us goin’ until the big one came off. He was with Malay John in this room to-day when a gambler from up the State somewhere blew in with a roll of about three thousand dollars, and handed it over to Malay to keep while he knocked around town for a day or two. Malay put the money in this safe here, and that’s what Slimmy was after for a starter. I told Slimmy I was all through—that I was goin’ straight. He wouldn’t believe me. I guess you don’t. I guess nobody will. I got a record that’s maybe too black to live down, and—oh, well, what’s the use! I meant to live decent, but I guess any chance I had is gone now.” His voice choked. “That’s the way I had doped it out up there in the pen—that I was goin’ straight. That’s all, isn’t it? I told Slimmy I was through—but Slimmy held something over me that was good for twenty years. What could I do? I said I’d come in on this, figurin’ that I could queer the game by stallin’. I—I tried it. If you were here, you saw me. I pretended that I couldn’t open the safe, and—”
“Can you?” inquired Jimmie Dale gently.
“That thing!” Birdie Lee smiled mirthlessly. “Why it’s only a double combin—”
“Open it, then,” prompted Jimmie Dale.
Birdie Lee stooped impulsively to the dial of the safe; hesitated, then straightened up again, and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I guess I’ll take my medicine. I don’t know who you are. I might just as well have opened it for Slimmy as for you. It looks as though you were after the same thing he was.”
Jimmie Dale smiled.
“Stand a little away from the safe, Birdie—there,” he instructed. And, as the other obeyed wonderingly, Jimmie Dale knelt to the dial. “You see, I trust you not to move,” he said. The dial was whirling under the sensitive fingers, and, like Birdie before him, his ear was pressed against the face of the safe.
The moments went by. Birdie Lee was watching in an eager, fascinated, startled way. Came at last a sharp, metallic click, as Jimmie Dale flung the handle over—and the door swung wide. He shut it again instantly—and locked it.
“It’s your turn, Birdie,” he said calmly. “You see that, as far as I or my intentions are concerned, it doesn’t matter whether you open it or not.”
“Who are you?” There was awed admiration in Birdie’s voice. “You’re slicker than ever I was, even in the old days. For God’s sake, who are you?”
“Never mind,” said Jimmie Dale. “Open the safe, if you can.”
“I can open it all right,” said Birdie, moving slowly forward; “and quicker than you did, because I got the combination when I was workin’ on it with Slimmy watchin’. Throw the light on the knob, will you?”
It was barely an instant before Birdie Lee swung back the door.
“Now