The Hand of Peril/Part 3/Chapter 7
VII
The rose-clad woman in front of the dressing-table did not scream out. She did not even swing about in her fragile-looking chair of cream and gold. She sat, leaning a little forward, staring past her own image in the mirror.
Her face had lost the last of its colour. Her arms, Kestner could now see, were stippled with a faint mottling of colour. The droop of the torso was eloquent of suddenly diverted attention. It was plain that she had caught sight of the head about the screen-top. Then her prepossession seemed to return to her, for the suddenly rose from her chair and faced the other side of the room.
It was at the same moment that Morello, nettled by the discovery of his spying attitude, stepped into the open. The two strangely divergent figures stood confronting each other for several seconds of unbroken silence. Then the woman spoke.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, her voice clear and reed-like but a little tense with its angry challenge.
"I came back!" Morello spoke quietly, almost humbly.
"Why?"
"I came back," he repeated, "for you!"
He held out his two hands as he spoke, with a gesture that was characteristically Latin, as exotic as the intonation of the English which he spoke almost without accent. But Kestner noticed that the outstretched hands were shaking a little.
"Tony," demanded the woman again, more sharply this time, "what does this mean?"
He took a step nearer to her before he spoke again. Kestner could detect a growing tenseness in that strange and swarthy figure. He could see an animal-like radiance in the seal-brown eyes. Malignancy was not the note of that passionate figure. It seemed more one of tragic misery.
"I can not wait—I can not!" Morello half-whispered, closing the fingers of his outstretched hands and then drawing his arms quickly back until the closed fists smote on his breast. It was an eloquent gesture; unconsciously it made the watching Kestner think of a grand-opera hero: its one redemption was its sincerity.
"You were to meet Fonaro in Washington," the woman said with a sharp note of reproof.
"No, that was useless. I have been shadowed. I was followed. I saw it was no good. So I turned back."
She stood studying him.
"Then you were followed here," she cried.
He shook his head.
"That was impossible," he replied, with his eyes always fixed on her face.
"Nothing is impossible, with things as they are!" she quickly warned him.
"It is impossible," he repeated.
"And you knew I was alone?"
"Yes," he admitted, with the imploring hands again thrust out towards her. "I knew, and I came."
She was breathing more quickly by this time and a touch of colour had come to either cheek.
"Then you must go!" was her summary command.
The Neapolitan stood with his head bowed. "I can not," he said with almost a moan.
Maura Lambert took a step nearer him and was about to speak when the telephone-bell on the dressing-table shrilled out a sudden alarm. She crossed to the table and took up the receiver, cupping the bell with her hand. She sat listening, poured a quick torrent of French into the 'phone and then sat listening again, interrupting with an intent monosyllable or two. Then she hung up the receiver and swung about on Morello.
"Listen," she said sharply. "There's been trouble. Father was shadowed and held up in Central Park. They struck him and took everything. He pretended to be unconscious until the chance came, then he slipped out of the cab and got away in the Park. He's just sent word to Cherry and Fontana!"
She pressed her hands against her side with a gesture of despair, oblivious for the moment of Morello and his presence. "It's the same thing over again—the same thing over!"
"It will always be the same thing over, now," Morello reminded her.
"We can't stay here," she said, still oblivious of him, still unconscious of the luminous seal-brown eyes watching her.
"You will have to come with me," he said.
"With you?" she demanded, staring at him with slowly awakening eyes. "And where will I go with you?"
"I do not care—so long as you come," was his passionate declaration.
"Didn't I tell you there was to be no more of this?" she demanded, fixing him with a gaze as cold as glacial ice. But he seemed conscious of only one compulsion, swept by only one emotion.
"I love you!" he suddenly cried out, the words seeming to erupt from a volcano that could not be controlled.
It startled Kestner a little to see that the tears were streaming down the Neapolitan's face, that his body was shaking with the passion that swept it
Yet the girl turned studiously about and placed the silver-backed hair-brush on her dressing table. Then she stepped quietly over to where he stood, facing him fearlessly, with a brow still slightly wrinkled in thought. She opened her lips to speak. But Morello drowned her first words in his suddenly repeated cry of "I love you!" He lifted his two hands quaveringly, one on each side of her uncovered arms. They came together and touched the bare flesh. Then with a sob he seized her.
His arms went about her slender body, crushing it and drawing it in against his own. He held her, writhing and twisting, until there seemed something antediluvial and barbaric in their struggles, in the woman's cloud of tangled and tossing hair, in her gasping cry that was shut off by Morello's mouth closing over her own.
Then Kestner could stand it no longer. He felt that his moment had come, and he made ready for it.
Yet he did not spring into the room. Every tense chord suddenly relaxed, for quick as thought the scene had taken on a new and quite unexpected aspect. The door just beyond the screen of rose and gold had quickly opened and a third figure had suddenly crossed the room. It at once reminded Kestner of the opened back window belowstairs, for in one hand this figure held a burglar's billy. One glance at that roughly clad interloper, with his narrow and rat-like brow, his weak and vicious mouth, told only too plainly what was coming.
There was a cat-like quickness in his movement as he struck at Morello. Well directed as that blow was, the Neapolitan did not go down. He staggered, threw his arms up, and swung about. He was groping for his revolver when the second blow came. Then the man with the billy, comprehending the movement, clinched, and fought with the fury of a wharf-rat. The screen of rose and gold went down in the struggle; a chair was overturned. Instinctively Morello gave way before that shower of blows. The two had fought their way to the doorway before Kestner realised the necessity of slipping back into the darkness. Then came another blow, at the base of the skull, and Morello went down like a stockyard steer, without a sound.
The rat-browed victor dropped on one knee beside him. A second later he had possession of the revolver. With an equally quick movement or two he had taken what money there was in the unconscious man's pockets. Then he turned the vanquished man over, pushing him towards the head of the stairs. One final shove, as the inert figure balanced there, sent Morello rolling down the wide stairway. A moment later the conqueror had darted back into the room.
"Git into that corner!" Kestner could hear him cry out. The cry brought Kestner back to the doorway, with his own revolver in his hand.
"Git back there, quick!" barked the housebreaker, accentuating the command with an oath. Then he stood, squint-eyed in front of her, staring at the white column of her throat, at the torn front of her dressing-gown, at the quick rise and fall of her bosom.
"No wonder th' guinney fell f'r yuh," he said with a contemplative bark of a laugh.
"What do you want?" she asked, pure terror in her voice by this time.
"Wat do I want?" repeated the man with the revolver. "First t'ing I want some o' the money that's rottin' round this house. Then I want"—He broke off with a raucous and mirthless cackle of a laugh.
"There's no money here."
"No money?" he mocked. "Not a cent t' play th' ponies wit', day after day, I s'pose? Honey-bird, I got me tip straight, an' I'm goin' to git me haul."
She struggled to achieve an appearance of calmness. But her hand was shaking as she looked at the watch hanging by its slender gold chain from her neck. "Unless you get that haul in five minutes there will be other people in this house!"
The man's response to that threat was both quick and decisive.
"Gi' me that timepiece!"
She hesitated, with her eyes meeting his. He swung out a hand, caught the watch, and with a quick jerk broke the chain from her neck.
"Now the junk out o' them drawers!" he commanded.
She turned to the dressing-table, the man with the revolver stepping after her. He stood directly behind her, with his head thrust forward like the head of a fighting-cock, following every move she made.
Kestner could wait no longer. He had suffered too much through the interference of others; and time, he knew, was terribly precious.
His rubbers made his footsteps noiseless as he glided into the room. When he sprang for the man with the revolver it was with a down-sweep of two outstretched arms.
That impact, from a quarter so unexpected, not only sent the man staggering forward, but struck the poised right arm with the revolver sharply floorward, the sudden finger pressure on the trigger exploding one chamber as they fell. But Kestner's grip on the other man was well placed and that other man's arms were pinioned close to his side as the two of them went down.
The woman swung about with a sound, half-gasp and half-scream, at the struggle so close to her. That struggle was still going on as she suddenly ran forward, stooped down, and wrenched the firearm from the clutch of the overtaxed burglar. Then she backed away, conscious that she was mistress of the situation.
Kestner heard her sharp call of command to him. But he ignored it, for his fighting blood was up and his rat-browed adversary had betrayed a desire to close his teeth on Kestner's thumb.
The woman repeated the command, more sharply, but still the fight went on. When it was over and Kestner stooped, panting, with one knee on the other man's chest, that other man showed a sadly battered face and a much subdued spirit. On the whole, Kestner grimly remembered, it had been an evening of uncommonly active pugilism.
"Stand up," Maura Lambert was commanding him as he stopped to wipe the sweat from his eyes. Her face disturbed him. Never before had he seen it wear a look so steely. There was something ominous in her very calmness.
"Stand up!" she repeated with the revolver covering him.
Kestner slowly and reluctantly rose to his feet. As the other man made an effort to raise himself the woman stepped back quickly. "Don't move," she called out to this other man, her voice now breaking shrill with tension, "or I'll kill you!" Then she turned back to Kestner.
"You have a revolver," she said. "Where is it?"
Kestner did not answer her, for at that moment still another figure stepped into the room. It was the figure of a young woman in a sodden-plumed hat and a dripping cravenette coat. And it took only a glance at that pert young face to see that the newcomer was Sadie Wimpel.
"Hully gee," was her slightly breathless cry as her gaze swept the room, "this sure looks like somethin' doin' here too!"
"Cherry, take that man's revolver," commanded Maura Lambert, "and then get what this other man has taken!"
"Sure," answered the girl. She stepped over to Kestner and proceeded to "frisk" him. The other woman commanded the burglar to get to his feet.
"Pipe the cop!" exclaimed Cherry as she lifted the two pairs of polished metal handcuffs from Kestner's pocket. Then she glanced disdainfully at the rat-browed burglar whom the other woman had backed up beside Kestner. "An' who's th' high-brow?" she nonchalantly inquired as she went on with her search.
Then she stopped, listening. She ran across the room and out into the hall, leaning over the banister for a moment or two. Her jocularity had departed when she returned to the room.
"Lady, we've gotta beat it when the goin's good! That's the Governer's signal!"
"Are you sure?" asked the other woman.
"Sure? Ain't he just gathered up Tony an' the bag full o' paper an' this guy's overcoat? An' ain't he sendin' me up here to give you th' tip before th' line closes in on us?"
"Then what can we do with this man?" asked the woman with the revolver. Her eyes met Kestner's; then she looked away.
"Keep 'em covered an' I'll fix that," announced the girl as she ran over to where Kestner stood, caught him by the coat-sleeve and quickly snapped a pair of his own handcuffs over his wrists. She did the same with the smaller man beside him. Only, before she snapped the last cuff on that soiled and skinny wrist, she suddenly linked his free hand through Kestner's locked arms. This left the incongruous pair linked together, arm in arm. Then the girl ran to the stair-head for a second time.
"F'r th' love o' Mike, get a move on!" she called impatiently back.… And when Wilsnach arrived, twelve minutes later, he found Kestner sitting on the bedroom window-sill, morosely chewing on an unlighted cigar and linked to an even more morose-looking burglar with a brow like a rat! And Wilsnach knew that for the third time they had failed.