I looked at his writhing face for a moment trying to determine if he was lying. I thought not. Big Ryan had undoubtedly traced that license number. That was but the work of a few minutes on the telephone with the proper party. He couldn’t have gone after the girl himself because he had been at Dr. Drake’s too soon afterward. On the other hand, he had gone to a public telephone because he had undoubtedly telephoned Dr. Drake and told him of his accident, probably warned him against me. From what the doctor had said, Ryan knew I was there, and he had dropped everything to come after me. What more natural than that he should have telephoned the cat-woman to go and get the girl.
I turned and strode toward the door.
“Listen, you rat,” I snapped. “If you have lied to me, you’ll die!”
His eyes rolled a bit, his mouth twitched, but he said nothing. I ran into the dark outer office, threw open the door, snapped the lock back on the entrance door, banged it and raced to the elevator. Then I turned and softly retraced my steps, slipped into the dark outer office, and tiptoed to the door of the private office. By opening it a crack I could see the lawyer huddled at his desk, frantically clicking the hook on the telephone.
In a minute he got central, snapped a number, waited and then gave his message in five words. “He’s on his way out,” he said, and hung up.
I only needed one guess. He was talking to the cat-woman. They had prepared a trap, had baited it with the girl, and were waiting for me to walk into it.
I went back into the hall, slipped down the elevator, went to my car and stepped on the starter. As I went I thought. Time was precious. Long years of being on my own resources had taught me to speed up my thinking processes. For years I had been a lone wolf, had earned the name of being the phantom crook, one who could slip through the fingers of the police. Then there had been a welcome vacation while I enjoyed immunity in California, but now all that was past. I was my own man, back in the thick of things. I had accomplished everything I had done previously by thinking fast, reaching quick decisions, and putting those decisions into instant execution. This night I made up my mind I would walk into the trap and steal the bait; whether I could walk out again depended upon my abilities. I would be matching my wits against those of the cat-woman, and she was no mean antagonist. Witness the manner in which she had learned that the girl had not been murdered, that I had convinced the girl of the woman’s duplicity, had taken her in as a partner, the manner in which the cat-woman had known she could reach me through the girl, that I would pick on Atmore as being the weak link in the chain.
I stopped at a drug store long enough to read the paper I had taken from the book at Dr. Drake’s house, and to telephone. I wanted to know all the cards I held in my hand before I called for a showdown.
The document was a strange one. It was nothing more nor less than a consent that the doctor should take an unborn baby and do with it as he wished. It was signed by the expectant mother. Apparently it was merely one of thousands of such documents which find their way into the hands of doctors. Yet I was certain it represented an important link in a strong chain. Upon the back of the document were three signatures. One of them was the signature of Hattie M. Hare. There were addresses, too, also telephone numbers. Beneath the three signatures were the words “nurses and witnesses.”
I consulted the directory, got the number of H. F. Morton, and got him out of bed.
“This is Mr. Holton,” I husked into the telephone. “Come to my house at once.”
With the words I banged the receiver against the telephone a couple of times and hung up. Then I sprinted into the street, climbed into the machine and was off.
I had no time to waste, and yet I was afraid the trap would be sprung before I could get the bait. It was late and a ring at the doorbell would have been a telltale sign. I parked the machine a block away, hit the backyards and approached the gloomy mass of shadows which marked the home of Arthur C. Holton, the oil magnate. I was in danger and knew it, knew also that the danger was becoming more imminent every minute.
I picked a pantry window. Some of the others looked more inviting, but I picked one which I would hardly have been expected to have chosen. There had already been a few minutes’ delay. Seconds were precious. I knew the house well enough to take it almost at a run. When I have once been inside a place I can generally dope out the plan of the floors, and I always remember those plans.
In the front room there was just the flicker of a fire in the big fireplace. Above the tiles there glowed two spots of fire. I had been right in my surmise about the painting of the cat’s head. The eyes had been tinted with luminous paint.
In the darkness there came a faint, dull, “click.” It was a sound such as is made by a telephone bell when it gives merely the jump of an electrical contact, a sound which comes when a receiver has been removed from an extension line. With the sound I had out my flashlight and was searching for the telephone. If anyone was using an extension telephone in another part of the house I wanted to hear what was being said.
It took me a few seconds to locate the instrument, and then I slipped over to it and eased the receiver from the hook. It was the cat-woman who was talking:
“Yes, Arthur C. Holton’s residence, and come right away. You know he threatened to return. Yes, I know it’s Ed Jenkins. I tell you I saw his face. Yes, the phantom crook. Send two cars and come at once.”
There was a muttered assent from the cop at the other end of the line, and then the click of two receivers. Mine made a third.
So that was the game, was it? In some way she had known when I entered the place. I fully credited those luminous, cat-eyes of hers with being able to see in the dark. She had laid a trap for me, baited it with the girl, and now she had summoned the police. Oh well, I had been in worse difficulties before.
I took the carpeted stairway on the balls of my feet, taking the stairs two at a time. There was a long corridor above from which there opened numerous bedrooms. I saw a flutter of pink at one end of the hall, a mere flash of woman’s draperies. I made for that point, and I went at top speed. If my surmise was correct I had no time to spare, not so much as the tick of a watch.
The door was closed and I flung it open, standing not upon ceremony or formalities. I was racing with death.
Within the room was a dull light, a reflected, diffused light which came from the corridor, around a corner, against the half-open door, and into the room. There was a bed and a white figure was stretched upon the bed, a figure which was struggling in the first panic of a sudden awakening. When I had flung the door open it had crashed against the wall, rebounded so that it was half closed, and then remained shivering on its hinges, catching and reflecting the light from the hall.
In that semi-darkness the cat-woman showed as a flutter of flowing silk. She moved with the darting quickness of a cat springing on its prey. She had turned her head as I crashed into the room, and her eyes, catching the light from the hall, glowed a pale, baleful green, a green of hate, of tigerish intensity of rage.
Quick as she was, I was quicker. As the light caught the flicker of cold steel I flung her to one side, slammed her against the wall. She was thin, lithe, supple, but the warm flesh of her which met my hands through the thin veil of sheer silk was as hard as wire springs. She recoiled from the wall, poised lightly on her feet, gave me a flicker of the light from those cat-eyes once more, and then fluttered from the room, her silks flapping in the breeze of her progress. Two hands shot from the bed and grasped me by the shoulders, great, hairy hands with clutching fingers.
“Jenkins! Ed Jenkins!” exclaimed a voice.