“There is proof. I have the signed statement in my pocket. Doctor Drake will talk. Harry Atmore will confess… There she goes. Stop her!”
The cat-woman had seen that her play was ended. She had realized that she was at the end of her rope, that I held the evidence in my possession, that the bound and gagged girl upstairs would testify against her. She had dashed from the room while the stupefied police had held me and stared at her with goggle eyes.
Openmouthed they watched her flight, no one making any attempt to take after her, eight or ten holding me in their clumsy hands while the cat-woman, the arch criminal of them all dashed out into the night.
H. F. Morton looked at me and smiled.
“Police efficiency, Jenkins,” he said.
Then he faced the officers. “Turn him loose.”
The officers shifted uneasily. The man in charge drew himself up stiffly and saluted. “He is a noted criminal with a price on his head, the very devil of a crook, sor.”
Morton drummed steadily on the desk.
“What charge have you against him?”
The officer grunted.
“Stealin’ Mr. Holton’s necklace, an’ breakin’ into his house, sor.”
“Those charges are withdrawn,” came from the rear of the room in deep, firm tones.
I turned to see Arthur C. Holton. He had dressed and joined the group. I did not even know when he had entered the room, how much he had heard. By his side, her eyes starry, stood Jean Ellery, and there were gleaming gems of moisture on her cheeks.
The policeman grunted.
“For kidnappin’ the young lady an’ holdin’ her. If she stayed against her will ’twas abductin’, an’ she wouldn’t have stayed with a crook of her own accord, not without communicatin’ with her folks.”
That was a poser. I could hear Jean suck in her breath to speak the words that would have freed me but would have damned her in society forever; but she had not the chance.
Before I could even beat her to it, before my confession would have spared her name and sent me to the penitentiary, H. F. Morton’s shrewd mind had grasped all the angles of the situation, and he beat us all to it.
“You are wrong. The girl was not kidnapped. Jenkins never saw her before.”
The policeman grinned broadly.
“Then would yez mind tellin’ me where she was while all this hue an’ cry was bein’ raised, while everyone was searchin’ for her?”
Morton smiled politely, urbanely.
“Not at all, officer. She was at my house, as the guest of my wife. Feeling that her interests were being jeopardized and that her life was in danger, I had her stay incognito in my own home.”
There was tense, thick silence.
The girl gasped. The clock ticked. There was the thick, heavy breathing of the big-bodied policemen.
“Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rumiddy, tumptidy, tumpy tum-tum,” drummed the lawyer. “Officer, turn that man loose. Take off those handcuffs. Take… off… those… handcuffs… I… say. You haven’t a thing against him in California.”
As one in a daze, the officer fitted his key to the handcuffs, the police fell back, and I stood a free man.
“Good night,” said the lawyer pointedly, his steely eyes glittering into those of the officers.
Shamefacedly, the officers trooped from the room.
Jean threw herself into my arms.
“Ed, you came back because of me! You risked your life to save mine, to see that a wrong was righted, to see that I was restored to my father! Ed, dear, you are a man in a million.”
I patted her shoulder.
“You were a good pal, Jean and I saw you through,” I said. “Now you must forget about it. The daughter of a prominent millionaire has no business knowing a crook.”
Arthur Holton advanced, hand outstretched.
“I was hypnotized, fooled, taken in by an adventuress and worse. I can hardly think clearly, the events of the past few minutes have been so swift, but this much I do know. I can never repay you for what you have done, Ed Jenkins. I will see that your name is cleared of every charge against you in every state, that you are a free man, that you are restored to citizenship, and that you have the right to live,” and here he glanced at Jean: “You will stay with us as my guest?”
I shook my head. It was all right for them to feel grateful, to get a bit sloppy now that the grandstand play had been made, but they’d probably feel different about it by morning.
“I think I’ll be on my way,” I said, and started for the door.
“Ed!” It was the girl’s cry, a cry which was as sharp, as stabbing as a quick pain at the heart. “Ed, you’re not leaving!”
By way of answer I stumbled forward. Hell, was it possible that the difficulty with that threshold was that there was a mist in my eyes? Was Ed Jenkins, the phantom crook, known and feared by the police of a dozen states, becoming an old woman?
Two soft arms flashed about my neck, a swift kiss planted itself on my cheek, warm lips whispered in my ear.
I shook myself free, and stumbled out into the darkness. She was nothing but a kid, the daughter of a millionaire oil magnate. I was a crook. Nothing but hurt to her could come to any further acquaintance. It had gone too far already.
I jumped to one side, doubled around the house, away from the street lights, hugging the shadow which lay near the wall. From within the room, through the half-open window there came a steady, throbbing, thrumming sound: “Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tummy; tum-tummy-tum-tum.”
H. F. Morton was thinking.
This Way Out
He slipped into my little apartment with a quick glance over his shoulder and a finger to his lips. I frowned at him. A crook he was, and I don’t care to have crooks pay me social calls. I have made my reputation in crookdom as being a lone wolf, one who has no friends.
“Ed,” he whispered, “I’ve come as a friend. You did me a good turn once, and I haven’t forgotten it. The woman with the mole on her left hand — watch out for her. They’re after you, Ed Jenkins. The police want you. The crooks want you. You haven’t a gang to back you up… Beware of the woman with the mole on her left hand.”
That much of a warning he gave me, and then he was gone. It was as well. I pay but little attention to warnings. Also he left the jail smell in the apartment, that sickening, cloying odor of jail disinfectant. He had been in for vagrancy, this crook who was known as the Weasel. When the police couldn’t frame anything better on him they’d throw him in on a vagrancy charge and bully him just enough to let him remember that he was nothing but a crook, and a weak crook at that. The stronger ones they left alone until they really had something on them. Little crooks like the Weasel were beaten up, knocked around from pillar to post.
I opened the windows to let the apartment air out.
As I flung open the window and stuck my head out into the balmy air of the summer night there came the bark of a pistol, another and another. Then silence.
The shots had come from around the corner, perhaps a block away. There was the whining shriek of tires as a car skidded around the corner gathered momentum, and shot away into the night. A woman screamed, a man called out some hoarse question. There was the sound of running feet on the pavement, and isolated masses of animated curiosity sprinted toward the scene of the shooting.