I followed the man up the flight of stairs and down the long corridor. At the door of the study he coughed, knocked, and motioned me to follow.
“Step right in, sir.”
I stepped in, and, as the door closed, I tapped him over the head with a blackjack. It was a swift tap on the temple, and he went bye-bye right then. He was good for at least an hour’s sleep and a hell of a headache when he awoke.
With the sound of the blow the little, shriveled lawyer had jumped from the chair. I motioned for silence, and slammed the butler down in the chair Daniels had vacated, turning the chair so the back was toward the door, and only the top of the butler’s head showed as it rested on the back of the upholstery.
I motioned the lawyer back into the shadows of the dim room. “Get back and stand in the shadow,” I said, and the words were no more than out of my mouth than the door flung open and the little, rat-nosed lawyer popped into the room.
“Ah, Jenkins, thought you had got in the wrong place, did you?”
As he spoke he darted forward. Prepared as I was, I couldn’t anticipate his motions. The very swiftness of the thing took me by surprise. I had expected a few words, something like a quarrel, some statement or other. There was nothing. As he spoke he advanced with hand outstretched, and, managing to get close to the chair, his hand suddenly swooped over and down, and there was the glitter of steel.
I gasped. Casually, as smoothly and easily as though he had merely swatted a fly in passing, he had slipped a big dagger clean to the hilt in the form of the man in the chair.
“Jenkins,” he said, speaking rapidly, “you have killed this man. I saw you do it, and the footman over there saw you do it.” He indicated the man standing in the shadows. “I’m going to be merciful, to give you one chance to escape, but I shall have to report the murder.”
In my time I have seen much cold-blooded disregard for life, but never anything to equal that. The butler’s life blood was spurting out around the haft of the knife, splashing on the flags of the fireplace, and yet this man talked as easily, as casually as though he and I were alone in the room.
“You see, Jenkins, I fooled you. Get started.”
He turned, and flung open the door into the hall, and, as he did so, something about the figure standing back in the shadows caught his eye. Perhaps it was the glint of the light on the pistol which the old man was holding.
He gave one great oath and sprang forward, bending over the form in the chair. As he saw the man’s face, he gave a shriek and rushed to the hall door.
Instantly things began to happen.
The old lawyer shot instantly, and I think he missed. Colby spurted around the door and into the corridor, and then there came two heavy reports, the reports of a shotgun that was probably loaded with buckshot. That had been the trap that was planned for me. I was to run from the room, and the private detective who had “warned” the lawyer against me was to shoot me fleeing red-handed from the scene of the murder. Colby and the butler were to be witnesses.
With the dropping of the bullet-riddled body there came a wild scream from the stairs, the scream of a woman. Also from all about the house there sounded hoarse shouts, the shrilling of police whistles. All hell had broken loose, and there was I, Ed Jenkins, notorious crook, in the center of everything. I fancied the old lawyer would stand up for me, but then there was the matter of that safe combination. He’d naturally be curious to know how I knew about it.
All in all it was one hell of a party.
Again came the scream from the woman. This time nearer. I sprang to the hall. A white figure was bending over the prostrate body. She looked up as she saw me and then gave a glad cry.
It was the girl with the mole on her hand, the girl I had known as Maude Enders.
“Quick, Ed. Come this way. The police are here. There is only one way to go. Quick Ed. This way out!”
She didn’t even see the form of the aged lawyer standing there, his steely eyes twinkling softly, the revolver in his hand.
How she knew the house I don’t know, but know it she did. She swept me into the back of the study, through a doorway in the rear, down a little back passageway, into a small storeroom which had a window opening on a garage, out on the roof of the garage, crouching low, bent double, and we dropped to the ground.
I tried to hold her back. I wanted her to escape, and this seemed like suicide. It was a cinch the police would have the house surrounded. In some manner they had been tipped off. I had rather trusted to the lawyer than to take a chance on the sawed-off shotguns of the officers. However, there was no holding her back, and I remembered the murder of R. C. Rupert. Perhaps she dared not trust her life in the hands of another. To be arrested meant to be identified as the girl who had rushed from that flat while Rupert was bleeding on the floor.
At the back of the garage there was a sudden blurr of motion as a figure detached itself from the shrubbery. I braced myself for the crashing report, the red burst of flame as the shotgun exploded. The police would not ask questions when they were on the trail of Ed Jenkins.
To my surprise the figure seemed not to have seen us but moved back again into the shadow, and the girl and I rushed across the lawn, through a hedge, down the street and into my car.
“Oh, God!” she panted. “I tried to get there in time. I knew the house, but I didn’t know they had framed you. I only knew you were to be trapped in a corridor, but I didn’t know it was in that corridor. How did it happen it was not you that was shot?”
I grinned at her as the machine purred away into the darkness. “Thanks to your warning, I turned the tables on our friend, Mr. Colby.”
She was silent for a while.
“Daniels — did they kill him?”
I shook my head. “I planted another of the crooks in his chair and Colby stabbed him.”
She thought for another moment or two.
“Gee, but you’re thorough when you get started; aren’t you, Ed Jenkins?”
I laughed at that.
“But the genuine will was destroyed. Even if a forgery could be proven to be spurious, the real will would be destroyed and now Brundage is dead.”
She knew a lot about the case, this girl. She puzzled me, and how had she known enough to have told me “this way out” when she rushed out of that house? She was holding something back.
I started to tell her, then thought better of it.
“Let me out here, Ed,” she said. “It would mean my death if they saw me with you now.”
She was right, at that, and I swung the car into the curb.
“Why did you come to the house?” I asked her.
She hung her head. “I wanted to save you, Ed. I prayed I’d be in time.”
“And you ran the gauntlet of the police, and took chances on your own life?”
She made no answer. It was obvious that she had done so.
“Listen, kid,” I told her in a burst of confidence. “I don’t know your connection with this case, but I’ll tell you something. That genuine will was never destroyed. I knew a little about the care and devotion that Brundage girl had shown to her father, and the way the woman had wrecked his life. I slipped up to that safe in Daniels’ office and took out the genuine will and substituted the fake envelope. Then when I gave Colby the envelope I really gave him the genuine will. He, himself, substituted it when I opened the safe the second time, and the envelope he burned was the one containing the fake will.”
She looked at me, her eyes big and round.
“But how could you have known the location of the office, the identity of the man whose safe you were to open?”
I laughed a little. Better not to explain too much to her, to have her guessing a bit.
“That’s a trade secret. Now I’ll tell you something else. With the death of the lawyer there is one witness gone who could implicate you in the Rupert case. You play ball with me, and I’ll try and get the other one where he can’t hurt you. You must know that the fat crook with the icy eyes planted those two witnesses who came up the stairs as you were coming down.”