There was a sudden blurred movement of the figures on the shade—a sudden low, throttled cry of pain and fear.
Jimmie Dale's fingers touched the lower edge of the shade. They were not occupied in there with the window now! And it might even have been but the stirring of the night breeze. The shade swayed gently inward an inch, two—and floated almost imperceptibly back into place again.
Jimmie Dale's face was hard and strained. It was not difficult to pick out Manuel Santos from the group! The man's hands were tied, and he drooped over the table as though in a half swoon; his face was battered ferociously, and blood trickled in two or three little streams from his cheeks. Behind him stood the Kitten. In a corner Sadie Foy cackled applause, and rubbed skinny hands together joyously. There were four other men—dregs, rats, jacks-of-all-trades in the underworld. He knew three of them by name: Steenie Klotz; Red Jack; the Bummer. Nice names! But in the underworld the monikers were apt!
There came the sound of a blow, another, and another—and then a cry again. A voice gasped out weakly:
“Stop! For God's sake, stop! I—I'll tell.”
“Blamed if youse ain't a great memory worker, Steenie!” purred the Kitten's voice. “He's goin' to tell. Well, Manuel, where is it?”
“It—it's at the camp.” The man's words came painfully.
“Where's dat?” demanded the Kitten.
“It's on the Sound. It—it's just this side of the Martin-Holmes place.”
Jimmie Dale's brows contracted suddenly. The Martin-Holmes had nothing to do with this, of course; but he remembered now——
“Youse mean dat summer shack youse an' yer brother had?” inquired the Kitten softly.
“Yes,” the man answered.
“Nix on dat!” The Kitten jeered suddenly. “De bulls lived dere for about two weeks pawin' it over. Don't youse try any of dat stuff, my bucko! If it'd been in de house dey'd have found it. I heard dey even pulled de floors up. Say, Steenie, youse'd better try again!”
“No, no!” Manuel Santos' voice rose shrilly. “It's true! I'm telling you the truth. The police could never find it, but it's there.”
“All right,” said the Kitten evenly. “Tell us about it, den.”
“It ain't really in the house, it—it's outside the attic window.” The words came slowly in a mumbling sort of way. “It looks as though the eaves were all boarded in around the house, but you can move one of them above the window. There—there's only one window. It—it's there.”
There was a low, muttered chorus of exultant oaths; and then the Kitten's voice:
“Dat sounds good enough to be true.” He was purring again. “I'll get a closed car, an' we'll hike along out dere, an' youse'll come too, Manuel, so's dere won't be no tricks. Youse ain't such a fool after all, Manuel! A little trip to South America where youse'll be out of everybody's road, an' a lot safer yourself dan youse have been for de last six weeks tryin' to hide yerself away, is better'n takin' a last ride in a wooden box where youse can't look at de scenery! Youse're among friends, Manuel, if youse only knew it. Dere's some——”
Jimmie Dale was retreating from the window. A moment more, and he had gained the street; and, hurrying now, returning by the same way he had come, he reached his car in front of the Silver Dragon.
“Benson,” he said quietly, “we seem fated to make quite a night of it. Off and on, you've driven me a number of times to Mr. Martin-Holmes' summer residence out on the Sound. I know it's closed now for the season, but do you remember just exactly where it is?”
“Perfectly, sir,” said Benson.
“Good!” nodded Jimmie Dale. “Drive there now—that is to within, say, half a mile this side of the place. If I remember correctly, it's quite thickly wooded there. I leave it entirely to you to find a convenient spot in about that neighbourhood to run the car off the road and park it where it will not be seen.”
Benson stared, a hesitant, anxious expression creeping into his face.
Jimmie Dale smiled.
“I'm still quite all right, Benson,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Benson mechanically.
“And, by the way”—Jimmie Dale paused in the act of stepping into the car—“I might say that I am in a very great hurry, Benson.”
“Yes, sir,” said Benson heavily.
For a moment, as he settled back on the cushions and the car started forward, the smile held on Jimmie Dale's lips. Benson, like Jason, was comparable to a hen with her chick. Benson at this precise instant probably—to mix metaphors—was inwardly wriggling like an eel. He was probably debating with himself whether he should not drive directly home, and there, by brute force if necessary, with the assistance of Jason, put him, Jimmie Dale, back to bed again—even if he got fired for it! Benson, however, in the last analysis wouldn't do anything of the kind—he would play the game.
The smile faded now from Jimmie Dale's lips, and a puzzled, anxious look settled on his face as he dismissed Benson from his mind. He had acted quickly back there at Sadie Foy's because he had realised that there was no time to lose; and though, even then, he had realised too that the pieces of the puzzle seemed somehow strangely mismated, he had also realised that the final act in any case would be played out where he was going now—at the Santos' camp. Further, there was the moral responsibility to save that money, and nothing would have induced him to shift that responsibility to, say, the police, when instinctively he sensed, as he did, that the Phantom had still a card to play, a card that also must be played out at the same place. But what was that card? If it were only the Kitten who was involved, he could pick up the Kitten's trail again at the Santos camp; but it was more than the Kitten that he wanted, more than the Kitten that he still hoped for, and in which hope intuition told him he was justified. He wanted the Phantom—or Bunty Myers.
He had time now to solve the puzzle—if he could. But the pieces on closer examination only seemed the more mismated. They contradicted even the sense of intuition that was so strong upon him. Where was the Phantom's hand in this? The Kitten? Well, then, why that message?—“Sadie Foy's at eleven o'clock.” The Kitten had said himself he had been there long before eleven. The Kitten was therefore already at Sadie Foy's when the message was delivered to Curley at the Crescent Saloon. And then, again, the four men who were with the Kitten, he was absolutely certain, had no intimate connection with the Phantom; they were not the kind the Phantom gathered around him; they were simply apaches, buzzards of the underworld, mentally the lowest type of criminal, whose only knowledge of finesse was embodied in the use of a black-jack, a knife, or a revolver. They did not belong! Suppose then they had been hired for this special occasion? In that case the Kitten was already fully equipped to carry through the night's work. Why, then, the message?
The miles flew by; the minutes passed into quarter hours. They had long since been out on a country road.
What did it mean?
Jimmie Dale, save that at long intervals he subconsciously eased his position, sat motionless, staring introspectively at the window.
What did it mean?
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale sat erect. He had it! It had come like a flash. It dovetailed; it fitted in its minutest part. It postulated only that the Kitten had a means of ready communication with his unhallowed master, the Phantom, which in itself was axiomatic. The Kitten had haphazardly been in the company of the four apaches when one of the four, this Steenie, had recognised the fugitive, Manuel Santos. It was a “find” worth thirty thousand dollars—which the Kitten did not propose the other four should share.