CHAPTER XVII.
Turned Tables.
Betty reached the house in safety but there an unforeseen difficulty confronted her. In her haste to obey the summons, she had given no thought as to how she might gain re-entrance, if Welch had made his rounds and locked up for the night. She knew with what caution the house was guarded and if she encountered one of the alarm wires all would be lost. Even that would presuppose a window or door left unfastened and that was a contingency too remote to be considered.
The lower floor was still lighted and moving shadows blurred against the curtains of the windows as she skirted the side of the house on which the music room was located. Betty had taken no account of time but she felt that it must be very late and it was with a forlorn hope that she tried the kitchen door.
To her surprise it yielded against her hand and she pushed it slowly open, halting upon the threshold in sudden dread. A low light was still burning in the room and she saw a man seated at the table. His head rested upon his outflung arms and from where the girl stood she could hear his heavy stertorous breathing. The face was turned sidewise toward her and she had no difficulty in recognizing Welch, although his expression was oddly distorted and his heavy jowls were tinged a mottled purplish hue.
Betty tiptoed past him, scarcely daring to breathe, but he did not awaken and his rasping snore followed her as she fled silently up the stair. Her own room was reached at last and bolting the door she removed her damp, chilling garments, heavy with the night's dew and prepared for the task which remained to her when the household should finally retire.
The slender chain clung reassuringly to her neck and she drew out the little whistle and examined it. It was of silver, delicately chased, and bore upon a plain oval shield the initials H. R. It seemed incredible that so fragile and toylike an instrument could summon aid and yet upon it might sometime depend life or death for her. It was Ross's own that he had given to her, and she pressed it to her breast fervently as though it were a talisman to keep all danger and evil from her.
The hour dragged, but at length she heard the rustle of feet upon the stair and a murmur of voices which grew less and less as doors closed until silence fell once more.
Betty was in a fever of impatience, but she resolutely fixed her eyes upon the tiny clock on the mantel and waited in an excess of caution until the hands pointed to half-past one. Then with her dark robe girded about her and her felt-covered feet making no sound, she opened her door.
The next moment she started back in amazement. A chair had been placed a short distance down the hall near the entrance to Mrs. Atterbury's bedroom but it was empty and an oddly huddled figure lay beside it upon the floor. It was a woman, collapsed as though she had been overcome by slumber and slipped from her chair, but there was something about the inert, helpless figure and hoarse stertorous breath not unlike that of the other downstairs which warned Betty that this was no ordinary sleep.
Holding her breath she drew near the recumbent form and recognized Caroline. The woman's face was empurpled like that of Welch and her relaxed chin had fallen upon her breast giving her an expression of repellant brutish vacuity. Betty had always considered her a stolid unintelligent creature whose chief virtue was faithfulness, but now it was as if something malevolent and bestial had made itself manifest, betraying her real nature in her unconsciousness.
Hesitating no longer, Betty stole to the stairs and was descending as on the previous night, when again a light in the music room warned her of an alien presence. This time, however, it was not dim and flickering but a slender, dazzlingly brilliant ray, like the dart of a rapier, which swept the doorway in a flash and was gone, leaving behind a shimmering hazy glow.
Betty crept down, her unlighted candle and box of matches clutched to her breast. The glow still remained as that of a searchlight which has been shifted in another direction and while she paused breathless, the clink of metal and a low-muttered ejaculation in an unknown masculine voice came to her ears.
Step by step, with her heart fluttering like a wild thing, the girl advanced to the doorway and cautiously reconnoitred. The portrait of Beethoven was in its place, but before it knelt a man in rough dark clothes, the soles of his boots upturned and glistening with fresh gobbets of mud. A canvas bag open on the floor beside him displayed odd shapes of metal whose edges caught the light, and the bull's-eye lantern in the intruder's hand cast a steady stream of radiance about the benign pictured face above.
While his back was still turned, Betty slipped silently across the doorsill and to her hiding place of the night before where she crouched peering out from beneath the upraised piano top. The man was passing his hands hurriedly over the lower part of the frame, grunting in his impatience as the secret spring eluded his search. Once he turned his head slightly and she caught a glimpse of a heavy, protruding, unshaven jaw and flattened nose. The low visor of his cap concealed the forehead and eyes, but the profile was startling in its ferocity and sullen strength.
Although she realized that the clumsy fingers might at any moment touch the knob and a shrill alarm peal through the house the girl lingered, held by a slender thread of hope. Welch was sleeping, perhaps drugged, and there was a chance that he might not have attached the alarm system for the night before unconsciousness descended upon him. In that case, if she could but remain undiscovered until the burglar had accomplished his purpose and was gone, she could examine the rifled safe for herself.
"You're ahead of time, Mike. Admiring the portrait?" A low, sarcastic drawl sounded from the doorway and the man turned with an oath, holding something in his free hand which glittered ominously. Betty cowered back, her fluttering heart still and cold within her breast.
Leaning nonchalantly against the wall by the door, his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown and his dark face wreathed with a derisive smile, stood Jack Wolvert.
The man before the picture swore again, but in a relieved fashion.
"You don't mind taking chances, do you?" he growled. "I might have plugged you full of holes without lookin' first."
"Oh, no you wouldn't!" retorted Wolvert amiably. "If you'd been quick on the trigger you wouldn't have done your stretch at St. Quentin. Nifty portrait that, isn't it? Serves a two-fold purpose; immortalizes the likeness of the gentleman who composed what may be your funeral march, if you are lucky, and—"
"Say, cut the comedy, an' let's get down to business!" the other interrupted gruffly. "You'll have Welch lumberin' in on us before you know it."
"Not he!" Wolvert shrugged and strolled over to the picture. "He is sleeping the sleep of one who finishes off the wine-glasses left from dinner. I prepared one for his especial benefit."
"God!" The man called "Mike" recoiled. "You don't mean—"
"Of course not!" The languid tone was edged sharply. "I don't go in for anything crude! Caroline, too, ishors de combator, as you would express it, dead to the world. Her midnight cup of tea before she went on guard outside Marcia's door was of specific brewing. Our beloved Marcia, I may add, has resumed her Macbethan promenades."
"Walkin' again in her sleep?" Mike paused uneasily. "I don't like that! It always means bad luck for some of us! I ain't stuck on this job anyway; we could drop it now an' stick to the old game, fifty-fifty—"
"Forget it!" Wolvert snatched the lantern from the other's hand and trained its single ray upon the right hand corner of the frame. "Watch me, and duck when the big swing starts."
Betty watched also, her heart racing once more as Wolvert's facile fingers found the spring and the portrait swung out in a mighty sweep, revealing the square steel sheet built compactly into the wall. The buzzer of the alarm whirred impotently and was still, and Mike dropped to his knees before the aperture with a grunt of satisfaction, his suddenly aroused scruples forgotten in professional interest.
His bullet-shaped head completely blocked Betty's view of the combination, but she heard the clink of the knob as it whirled under his hand. At length Mike sat back on his heels, swearing softly.
"It's no go!" he breathed. "Can't feel the drop of the tumblers. I'll have to use the soup, after all."
"Go to it," responded Wolvert savagely. "It's a tough layer but thin; look out she doesn't eat through."
Then followed an interminable age while Betty crouched, tense and cramped, listening to the click of tools and pressing a fold of her gown across her mouth and nostrils to keep out the pungent fumes which stole upon the air. Would they penetrate the closed doors above and give warning that treachery was afoot?
"Ha!" Wolvert's ejaculation of triumph broke the protracted tension, just as the heavy door, with a grating jar, split like a crust before their eyes and fell outward, yawning upon one hinge.
"Got it!" Mike pushed back his cap and wiped his brow. "Armor plate's made of cheese compared to that! Now which is the pay dirt?"
Wolvert knelt beside him and threw the light upon the gaping cavity. Betty's eyes were watering but the fumes were gradually passing away and she could see that the interior of the safe was filled with packets of paper, neatly pigeon-holed in rows.
"Three hundred thousand!" Wolvert crooned, gloatingly. "Three hundred thousand and maybe more! God, what a haul! Think of it, Mike, the pickings of five years, salted down and waiting for us, to say nothing of rich veins that have scarcely been tapped yet!"
"I can lick my chops over 'em just as well when I've got 'em safe away from here!" Mike glanced apprehensively over his shoulder and Betty could see his eyes glistening like those of a cat in the shadow of his visored cap. "Hurry up and pick out the live wires from the dead ones. The old girl may take it into her head to walk again!"
"You can drop her with the blackjack if she does," Wolvert returned carelessly. His long, slender hands were darting in and out among the pigeonholes, sorting the various packets deftly and ranging them in two piles. "Got the wallets?"
"Here!" Mike produced oblong leather folders from each of his breast pockets. "Sure you don't overlook any good bets, Jack."
"No fear!" Wolvert passed over package after package of envelopes as he talked. "Here's the dope on the Texas matter; that's good for thirty or forty thousand to start with; this is the certificate for those two hundred shares of copper you've heard about. To the right party they're worth twenty thousand. These we might take on speculation; lumping them together we may figure on realizing a hundred thousand from them, roughly speaking."
"Some dough!" Mike chuckled, stowing away the packets as fast as they were handed to him. "What's this bunch?"
"Can't stop now to go over them, Mike, but I know what they are and I'll open your eyes when we sort them out over at your joint. Now, if I can only lay my hands on that Crane contract; I wonder where our careful Marcia cached it?"
"What's this, any good?" Mike had stuffed one bulging wallet back into his pocket and drawn a long envelope from one of the upper pigeonholes.
Wolvert glanced over his shoulder at the label and shrugged.
"Small change, a thousand or so, but take it along if you want it. It's easy money."
"A thousand cold iron men look good to me. I can feel 'em rolling into my hand right now, but those big figures make me afraid the alarm clock's liable to go off any minute an' wake me up. Say, get a move on, Jack. I'm gettin' a cold chill like someone was watchin' me!"
Betty gasped inaudibly and shrank still further back in her retreat, but Wolvert only shrugged in impatience.
"That Crane contract is the main thing; it's worth more than all the rest put together, to us!" he grumbled. "Get your head out of the light, Mike!"
"Is this it, in the long blue envelope?" The other had overcome his momentary uneasiness and resumed his search. "Feels kinder thick."
"No, don't pay dividends any more. It's the West—what's that?"
Betty had caught at the leg of the piano as her cramped limbs wavered beneath her and a little silver ring which she wore rapped smartly upon the polished surface of the wood. For one thrilling moment she held her breath, but the lantern swept around the opposite side of the room to the door and then flashed back and Mike swore once more.
"I've had enough of this, I tell you! I don't feel right and I've got a hunch that I'd better be movin'. Let the bloomin' contract go if you can't find it; we've got enough as it is!"
"Nothing doing!" Wolvert spoke through set teeth in a tone which the listening girl remembered with a shudder. "You don't beat it unless you take that with you!"
"Oh, don't I?" snarled Mike, leaping to his feet in swift rage. "I'll show you, my fine gentleman, that you ain't dealin' with a skirt now, to bully or soft-soap as you feel like it! I wouldn't be here if I wasn't through takin' orders from nobody—!"
"Easy there with the bluff!" Wolvert interrupted coolly. "You can't get along without me, you know. What you've got there is just so much waste paper to you, if I don't negotiate it for you. Don't be a quitter!"
"Nobody ain't ever called me that yet, but I'm hep that there's somethin' wrong. Give it up, Jack, an' let's lay the plant—"
"Here it is!" Wolvert swooped down upon a single folded paper and waved it exultantly. "Take it, Mike, and keep it well; it's a gold mine! Now come on and set the stage."
Before Betty's amazed eyes a curious scene was enacted. Seizing one after another of the heavy leather chairs which were grouped about the room, Wolvert and his accomplice noiselessly overturned them, easing them gently to the floor where they lay at grotesque angles. Next they turned their attention to the smokers' stand, rolling the smaller articles upon it in every direction until the rug was strewn with cigarettes and matches. The stand itself they placed upon its side against the wall as if it had been flung there with violence.
"How about the piano?" Mike's eyes travelled speculatively to the shadowed corner and Betty's senses reeled. "Gonna bang it up a little?"
"No, don't overdo the wreckage. Just move the center table over against it." Wolvert was busy scattering the remaining contents of the safe about before it. "Too bad we can't smash that bit of crockery; it would be the last finishing touch."
He gestured toward a priceless Royal Worcester vase which stood upon a teakwood taboret near the portrait, and Mike grinned.
"That's easy! Watch me knock it to smithereens!"
"And have the house about our ears?" Wolvert sneered, but the other paid no heed.
He had caught up a small silk prayer rug and, wrapping it about the vase, laid it upon the floor. Then, raising a sausage-like roll of cloth heavily weighed which he took from his bag, he struck it a blow with all the force of his brawny arm behind it. There was a dull thud and a soft, shivery tinkle, and when the rug was unwrapped a heap of jagged, richly-colored fragments was revealed. It was, as Wolvert had said, the finishing touch to a scene of havoc which seemingly only a hand-to-hand struggle could have wrought.
"Now for the rough stuff." Wolvert rose from his knees and with one quick, muscular jerk, ripped his dressing gown from thigh to shoulder, tearing one sleeve loose. Then he coolly turned his back to Mike and crossed his wrists behind him. "Tie them good and tight, Mike. We don't want to fake this part of the game."
Mike obeyed with alacrity, twisting the cord until Betty could see the slender wrists writhe.
"Now my ankles." Wolvert gritted his teeth, and in the light from the lantern beads of perspiration glittered on his forehead. He knelt again and then lay flat upon his back, facing the safe, his outstretched feet almost within the aperture.
Mike lashed them firmly and turning to his bag, produced a sponge and a small phial with which he approached his victim, grinning slyly.
"Easy on that!" warned Wolvert. "Don't put me out, Mike. Use just enough to leave the scent on my hair and shirt."
"I hate to beat it without my kit." Mike cast a reluctant eye on the bag at his feet. "Prettiest set of tools I ever had!"
"You won't need it again after we've turned this trick," responded his co-conspirator. "It's got to look as though you were scared off, you know. Don't forget to leave the chloroform too. Come on with it, I'm ready."
"Remember, Two Forty-seven Porter Street. I'll wait till midnight and if you don't show up by then I'll clear for the old hang-out in Baltimore. Here goes, pleasant dreams!"
He pulled the cork from the phial and a cloying sweetish odor choked the air. Producing a grimy handkerchief, Mike poured a few drops upon it and applied it to the head and throat of the prostrate man.
"Not—too—much!" The smothered tones died away in a mumble, and placing the phial upon the floor beside the recumbent figure Mike gave one last sweeping glance about the room and slipped like an eel through the door, the flash of his lantern vanishing with him into the gloom.
Waiting only until the rasp of a softly opening window had assured her that the intruder was gone, Betty crept from her hiding place, her pulses leaping madly. She had made a desperate resolve and realized that she must put it into immediate execution, before the fumes of the anæsthetic had cleared from the momentarily dulled brain of the man lying before her.
Lighting her candle, she placed it upon the floor and crept on her hands and knees toward the phial, keeping well out of the possible upward range of Wolvert's vision.
The half-stupefied man stirred and muttered as her fingers closed about the phial, but she dared not hesitate. With a shaking hand she poured an ounce of the pungent liquid over the grimy handkerchief which lay beneath her hand, and creeping to Wolvert, suddenly dropped it like a cone down over his upturned face, holding the sides drawn tightly down.
His limbs twitched and his head moved feebly, but she did not relinquish her pressure until the muscular action ceased and the body lay limp and flaccid as that of the dead. Then, with a little sob of exultation, she flung herself upon the safe and seizing the blue envelope of which Mike had spoken, she tore it open.
A swift glance over the single folded sheet of letter paper and long narrow slip, much creased and yellowed with age, which formed its contents, and Betty clasped it convulsively to her breast. Her face was transfigured as she crept to her candle and with it crossed to the hearth.
A moment more and a clear flame sprang up, flaring fitfully in her trembling hands, then died and only a tiny heap of fluffy black flakes among the heavier wood ashes told of her desperate plan's consummation.
She turned to escape, but a glance at the motionless form halted her in mid-flight. Suppose she had killed him!
Betty's heart contracted and fearfully she approached him once more. The handkerchief had slipped from his face and its deathlike pallor seemed to confirm her misgiving.
Kneeling beside him, she had placed her hand upon his breast, when a lurching shuffle in the hall made her recoil.
Stumbling and clinging to the wall for support, Welch reeled in at the doorway, and his drug-dulled eyes burst into sudden flame as they lighted upon her.
"D—— you!" he bellowed. "Got you with the goods at last!"