“What’s that?” came a hoarse, shaken whisper out of the blackness beyond.
“What’s what?” demanded another voice—the whisper this time sharp and caustic. “I didn’t hear anything!”
“Neither did I,” admitted the first speaker. “It wasn’t that—it was like a draft of air—as though the door or a window had been opened.”
“Forget it!” observed the second voice contemptuously. “Cut out the jumps—we’ve got to get through here before Sonnino gets back. You’d make a wooden Indian nervous!”
There was silence for an instant, then a curious gnawing sound punctuated with quick, low, metallic rasps as of a ratchet at work—and upon Jimmie Dale for a moment came stunned dismay. Time, the one factor upon which he had depended, was lost to him; Clarie Archman and Gentleman Laroque were already at work in there in that room beyond. He stood motionless, his brain whirling; and then slowly, without a sound, an inch at a time, he began to close the door behind him. He could see nothing; but the door connecting the two rooms was obviously open—the distinctness with which the whispering voices had reached him was proof of that. They were working, too, without light, or he would have got a warning gleam when he had looked through the window. And now—what now? The picklock was shifted to his left hand, as he drew his automatic from his pocket. There was only one answer to the question—to play the game out to the end, whatever that end might be!
Beneath the mask his face drew into chiselled lines, as the picklock silently locked the door. There was one exit from that inner room, and only one—through the room in which he stood. The Tocsin had drawn an accurate word-plan of the crude, shack-like place, and now in his mind he reconstructed it here in the darkness. The doorway into a small hall that led to the stairs adjoined the doorway of that inner room where the two were now at work—and in that room were no windows, it was a sort of blind cubby-hole where Niccolo Sonnino transacted his most private business.
Jimmie Dale crept forward up the room. There was no answering creak of board or flooring, no sound save that gnawing sound, and the rasping click of the ratchet. His place of vantage was against the wall between the two doors—there, he could both command the exit from, and see into, the inner room, while the doorway into the hall provided him with a means of retreat should the necessity arise. And then, suddenly, halfway up the room, he dropped down behind what was evidently a jeweller’s workbench. A whisper, obviously Laroque’s this time, came once more from the inner room.
“Shoot the flash again!” And then, savagely: “Curse it, not on the ceiling! Can’t you hold it steady! What the devil is the matter with you!”
There was no answer. A dull glimmer of light filtered through the doorway, but from the position in which he lay Jimmie Dale could distinguish nothing in the inner room itself.
“All right! That’ll do!” Laroque growled presently.
The light went out. Jimmie Dale crept forward again. And now he gained the rear wall of the room, and crouched down close against it between the two doorways.
Came the sound of breathing now, heavy, as from sustained exertion, making almost an undertone of the steady click-click-click of the ratchet, and the sullen gnaw of the bit. The minutes passed. The flashlight went on again—and Jimmie Dale strained forward. Two dark forms, backs to him, were outlined against the face of the safe which was at the far side of the room, a nickel dial glistened in the white ray—he could make out nothing else.
Then darkness again. And again, after a time, the flashlight. Ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes dragged by. Jimmie Dale might have been a shadow moving against the wall for all the sound he made as he changed his cramped position; but, just below the mask, his lips were pressed fiercely together. Would Gentleman Laroque never get through! Sonnino was not only likely to return in a very few minutes now, but was almost certain to do so. Under his breath Jimmie Dale cursed the gangster’s bungling methods—and not for their crudity alone. His first impulse had been to surprise the two, hold them up at the revolver point, but the result of such an act would have been abortive, for the disfigured safe would stand a mute, incontrovertible witness to the fact that an attempt to force it had been made—and, whether it was actual robbery or attempted robbery that was proved against the son, it in no way deflected the blow aimed at David Archman. And, besides, there was the letter! If he, Jimmie Dale, had been in time even to have prevented Gentleman Laroque from sinking a bit into the safe, the letter would have counted not at all—but now it counted to the extent that it literally meant life and death. Who had it? Not Clarie Archman—that was certain. And the Tocsin had not said—obviously because she, too, had been in the dark in that respect. Therefore he could only wait, watch and follow every move of the game throughout the rest of the night, if necessary! It was the only course open to him; the letter, not the robbery, was paramount now.
A curious, muffled, metallic thump, mingled with a quick, low-breathed, triumphant oath, came suddenly from the inner room—and then Laroque’s voice, eager, the words clipped off as though in feverish elation:
“There she is! One nice little job—eh? Well, come on—shoot your light into her, and let’s take a look at the Christmas tree!”
The flashlight’s ray flooded the interior of the open safe. Laroque, on his knees, laughed suddenly, and thrust his hand inside.
“What did I tell you, eh?” he chuckled. “I got the straight tip, eh? Four thousand, if there’s a cent!”
Laroque began to remove what were evidently packages of banknotes from the safe—but Jimmie Dale was no longer watching the scene. He had edged suddenly back into the doorway of the hall, and was listening now intently. A footstep—he could have sworn he had caught the sound of a footstep—seemed to have come from just outside the front window. But all was still again. Perhaps he had been mistaken. No! Slight as was the sound, he heard, unmistakably now, a key grate in the lock—and then, stealthily, the front door began to open.
A bewildered look came into Jimmie Dale’s face, as he retreated further back into the hallway itself now. It was probably Sonnino; but why did Sonnino come stealing into his own house like—well, like any one of the three predatory guests already there before him? And then Jimmie Dale’s face cleared. Of course! From the window the glow of the flashlight in the inner room could be seen. Sonnino was forewarned, and undoubtedly—forearmed!
The front door closed softly, so softly that had Jimmie Dale, supersensitive as his hearing was, not been intent upon it, it would have escaped him. The glow from the inner room, faint as it was, threw into shadowy relief a man’s form tiptoeing forward—and then a board creaked.
“What’s that!” came in a wild whisper from Clarie Archman.
“Got ‘em again!” Laroque snapped back. “You make me tired!”
“Let’s get out of here! Let’s get out of here—quick!” Clarie Archman’s voice, not so low now, held a tone of frantic appeal.
“Nix!” said Laroque, in a vicious sneer. “Not till the job’s done! D’ye think I’m going to spend half an hour cracking a safe and take a chance of missing any bets? We’ve got the coin all right, but there ought to be one or two of Sonnino’s sparklers lying around in some of these drawers, and—”
There was a click of an electric-light switch, a cry from Clarie Archman, the inner room was ablaze with light, and—Jimmie Dale had edged forward again out of the hallway—Sonnino, revolver in hand, was standing just over the threshold facing Gentleman Laroque and the assistant district attorney’s son.
Then silence—a silence of seconds that were as minutes. And then Gentleman Laroque laughed gratingly.
“Hello, Sonnino!” he said coolly. “A little late, aren’t you? You’ve kept me stalling for the last five minutes. Know my friend—Mr. Martin Moore, alias Mr. Clarie Archman? Clarie, this is Signor Niccolo Sonnino, the proprietor of this joint.”
And then to Jimmie Dale, where before