“You make twenty-five grand,” reminded Lence. “The full haul from this Lucaster sucker.”
“I was taking half of it anyway,” sneered Rowden, “and you wouldn’t be offering me your cut if I hadn’t talked terms with this gat I’m holding. I’m no chiseler, Tracy; but you are. You’ve proved it.
“Now I’ll do the talking. You’ll take the fifty-fifty split I offered. But you’ll let me in on this Cyro proposition. Wait a minute” — he paused as Lence made a gesture — “I’m not going to ask you to queer yourself with Cyro. You don’t have to spill any news about me.
“When we take it on the lam, we’ll head for New Orleans together. You go about your business. I’ll play the silent partner. You know I can keep a good thing to myself. So you won’t be spoiling Cyro’s game. But remember: it will be fifty-fifty, between us.”
“Not a chance, Roke.” Lence spoke seriously, as he poised his hand above an ash stand and let the cigarette stump fall. “I’m giving you straight stuff when I tell you that the deal wouldn’t work. There’s no money for me when I get to New Orleans.”
“No? Then why are you passing up your cut here?”
“Because I want to get back with Cyro. This trip means expenses. Nothing more. After that, maybe I’ll get something better. I’m playing for the future, that’s all.”
“So am I.”
“All right. Maybe I can fix it for you. Wait until I get with Cyro. If I work well on this deal he’s pulling — whatever it is — I may have a chance to boost you in with the outfit.”
“But you say you’ve never met Cyro.”
“I’ve reported through to him. I’ll do the same again. I won’t forget you, Roke. Put up that gat. Let’s get set for this fall-guy from Des Moines.”
“Get me straight,” rasped Roke, with a warning thrust of the gun. “I’m going to New Orleans! My proposition stays. No other.”
“But you can’t force me to it.”
“Can’t I? I could drill you and walk out of here without a person knowing it. That’s what I’ll do, too, unless you come clean. Take my terms; and if I find you trying to double-cross me, I’ll queer Cyro’s game.
“I know enough about it” — Roke delivered an ugly laugh — “enough to put the skids under it. There’s the proposition, Tracy. Are you taking it?”
“I guess so,” replied Lence, wearily. “Put up the gat, Roke. What you say goes. You’re in — on your own terms.”
Roke lowered his gun. His suave smile returned. Lence, a bit dejected, came toward his companion. Roke watched him fumble for his cigarette case. Lence brought the object from his left coat pocket. He offered a cigarette to Roke, who shook his head. Lence helped himself to one.
“Got a match, Roke?” he asked, in a humble tone. “I think I used my last one.”
Roke started to feel in his left coat pocket. Lence, in a natural fashion, copied the action, putting his right hand to his coat. Suddenly his hand came snapping into view.
Roke, with a snarl, raised his revolver to fire. He was too late.
A gun had flashed in Lence’s right hand. Point-blank, Lence loosed a shot at Rowden from a range of three feet.
Roke’s rising gun stopped short. A pained expression came over the man’s mustached face.
With gasped groans, Roke Rowden dropped his revolver. Hunching, he pressed his hands to his breast; then, with a sickly expression, he subsided to the floor. He lay there moaning, unable to pick up his gun. The man was mortally wounded.
“THANKS for the tip, Roke,” sneered Lence, lighting his cigarette. “I thought you were bluffing with that gat, until you reminded me that the shot would not be heard. I forgot that the near-by apartments were vacant.
“I’d like to help you out of misery” — Lence paused as he picked up the torn pieces of Cyro’s letter and the translation that went with them — “but it would not be artistic. You might pass for a suicide, the way you’re dying. A second bullet — through your brain — would be a give-away.”
The glass of water was standing on the desk; beside it lay Lence’s handkerchief. Lence polished the sides of the glass; then tipped it with his elbow. The glass toppled from the table. It broke upon the fringe of a rug and its contents trickled along the floor.
“Maybe they’ll think you were going to try poison, Roke,” suggested Lence. “Maybe they won’t. It doesn’t matter, either way. They won’t weep over a con man gone to blighty. This, however, is most important.”
Lence was polishing the handle of his revolver. Stopping by Roke’s side, he grasped the dying man’s sleeve and tugged a hand into view. He shoved his own gun into Roke’s fist. Roke’s fingers loosened; but one digit caught the trigger guard. The gun remained.
In case the police inspected the murder bullet, the gun Lence had substituted in Rowden’s hand would be proven the one which had fired the shot. Lence was building up a suicide theory.
A bulge showed in the dying man’s coat. With professional skill, Lence thrust his hand into Roke’s inside pocket and produced a bulky wallet. Opening it, Lence drew forth a wad of bank notes.
He looked at his victim’s huddled form and laughed at Roke’s paled expression. The gun was dangling neatly from Roke’s fingers, as though the hand had relaxed without completely losing hold. Roke’s eyes were closed. His shoulders heaved and sank as he breathed.
“Twenty-five grand,” chuckled Lence, as he counted the money that he had extracted. “I’m glad you brought it from the safe-deposit vault, Roke. It would have been useless there. You don’t need it any longer, Roke.
“A man doesn’t commit suicide while he still has a bank-roll the size of this one. Let me see: Ten dollars, twenty, thirty — you’re a flashy-looking chap, Roke. You’d carry at least a hundred. I’ll raise the ante.”
Lence added two twenties and a fifty to the three tens. He took two fives and a one from his own pocket and added them to make a total of one hundred and thirty-one dollars. He replaced the small sum in the wallet.
Carefully avoiding the blood that stained Roke’s shirt-front, Lence slipped the wallet back into the inside pocket. Edging the dying man’s body along the floor, he uncovered the revolver that Roke had dropped.
Lence picked up Roke’s unused gun. He eyed the victim and observed that Roke was almost motionless. Slow, moaning gasps came with painful monotony. Roke gave no other sign of life.
Stepping to the wastebasket, Lence dug out a fistful of torn paper. He began to examine fragments of envelopes. The third one was half an envelope that bore a New Orleans postmark. The next fragment looked like the missing half. Lence compared them. The two fitted.
There was no return address on the envelope. Lence recalled that Roke had not mentioned the book shop until he had opened the letter. Thrusting the torn pieces into his pocket, the murderous con man started toward the rear of the apartment.
On the way, he stopped and felt the timetables in his pocket. He decided to keep them. With a last look at Roke Rowden’s inert body, Tracy Lence delivered an evil chuckle and departed, through a darkened room.
Opening a window, he stepped to a fire escape. Roke Rowden had purposely chosen an apartment with an available emergency exit. Closing the window behind him, Tracy Lence, murderer, stole softly downward into the darkness of a courtyard.
CHAPTER III
UNEXPECTED VISITORS
SILENCE persisted in that lower courtyard after the departure of Tracy Lence. The murderer’s stealthy footfalls had been but slight clicks in that gloom. Stilled atmosphere clung shroudlike in the court during the five minutes that elapsed after the murderer’s exit.