More! With never a sound and never a scrape, the tall ladder had been propped against the wall, comfortably topping the sill of the last east window on the second floor. Even the emotional Mr. McGee’s voice was a bit unsteady as he whispered: “Well, hop to it, punk! Watcher step the next five minutes an’ you’ll be eatin’ cakes with gold syrup on ’em!”
And then Johnny was climbing, up, up, up, and it seemed the funny change in him was holding something elegant: he had reached the very top of the ladder without breaking his neck and he was staring into the gloom beyond the open window.
And also, as he suddenly sensed, it seemed he was going nuts!
He was hearing things. He was hearing a dog whine in the distance, only if wasn’t a dog and it wasn’t in the distance. It didn’t seem to be anywhere at all that you could place, and still it was there. Johnny Dolan scowled perplexedly and listened again. A very soft, strangling “yurrrrrp!” strayed vaguely through the whining sound.
“What’s got you now? A stroke?” hissed wickedly up from the ground.
With a start, Johnny Dolan gripped himself. If he desired, as indeed he did, to lead the life of Riley for the rest of his days, this was no time to be going nuts. He threw a leg over the sill and, having stepped inside, he wrestled the flashlight from his rear trousers pocket.
It was still going on! “Umph... umpha... umph!” and then finished off with a stiffed, sizzling sound like steam escaping from a leaky valve. Briefly, Johnny Dolan’s hair stood on end. It could easy be that there were ghosts in this drum; they’d naturally keep a thing like that out of the papers. Perspiring freely, he fingered at the button of his flashlight and finally jabbed it forward.
He stood gaping, petrified. According to the dope, the Rudwell frill hit the hay by eleven-thirty and there after pounded her ear like there was a chloroform sponge tied over her nose. Well, then, either this was the wrong room or the dope was very, very sour; because on the outside of the great bed some black-haired doll in fancy silk pajamas huddled down, her face buried in the pillow, crying as if her heart would bust!
Next, the moment’s really terrific phase crashed down on him.
When you worked under the Rat’s capable direction, you followed orders to the letter — or else. The Rat had ordered that Johnny Dolan immediately cool the doll if she waked up, and here she was already awake. Bright drops on Mr. Dolan’s forehead turned to streams, which ran down his nose and into his eyes, and his teeth chattered audibly; for in simple truth, despite much hair-raising discussion of homicide, it happened that never yet had Johnny Dolan taken a shot at a human being.
Still, there has to be a first time for everything.
Gasping, swallowing repeatedly, he fumbled with icy fingers in the side pocket of his coat.
“What... what the devil—” the girl cried amazedly, suddenly sitting up in the circle of light.
“H-h-hold it, kid! Not a s-squeak out o’ yuh!” Johnny Dolan panted, and tugged even again.
But she wasn’t acting the way she should. She was mad, not scared. Her reddened eyes snapping, she bounded from the bed and came straight at him — and just there, as it seemed, the great Rudwell house collapsed! The floor, that is to say, apparently flew up and smacked Johnny Dolan and the ceiling also came down and hit him. Ten billion blazing stars flamed briefly before his uncomprehending eyes. Then there was only blackness.
II
He was sprawled on a very soft bed, in some place where there were shaded lights. He moaned weary resignation. So he’d stumbled in front of still another truck, huh, and here he was back in the accident ward? Probably the usual dozen bones were broken, but mostly this truck appeared to have socked him on the right jaw, which was swollen and very toothachy. Without moving, Johnny Dolan let his eyes rove foggily about and... hey! this wasn’t no accident ward! This room was blue, not white, and there was a shelf on the wall full of big silver cups.
“What’s all — the tinware?” he murmured, most remotely.
“Tennis cups. I won ’em. That’s where the muscle came from,” an exquisite contralto voice answered. “I didn’t mean to knock you quite as cold as that, but you asked for it. You were trying to shoot me, weren’t you? Or were you?”
Johnny Dolan’s head rolled over slowly and his heart skipped a beat. The moll in the trick pajamas was sitting, quite clubbily, on the bed beside him — and what a moll! Shiny black hair and beautiful big black eyes and that greeny-brown skin which goes with them; but the outstanding feature of her seemed to be her total lack of’ fear. Johnny Dolan, it may be said, considered himself an extremely tough egg; yet this dame, who had put him down for the count, was smiling.
“Nice to run across you like this, anyhow, burglar,” she said. “What were you meaning to burgle? My jewelry?”
“Yes, lady,” Johnny Dolan said thinly, and stared on.
“And I spoiled it with a straight left to the jaw! Do stop fumbling in that pocket. I have your gun. Feel it?” She jabbed it into his ribs.
“Yes, lady,” Johnny Dolan said. “Would it be okey dokey if I was to sit up now? I wouldn’t try to make no getaway.”
“You wouldn’t go far if you did,” the girl assured him cheerily. “I usually beat ninety on the twenty-five yard target with, a four-inch barrel and this piece of junk has a four-inch barrel if it hasn’t much of anything, else. Sit up, by all means.”
Johnny Dolan wobbled to an upright position, found himself distinctly giddy and for a little held his aching head in his hands. Things in general, however, were clearing with perfectly ghastly speed: even now he had the whole picture.
“Hey, lady!” he said suddenly. “Would it also be okey dokey if I was t’ take it on the lam for that window, an’ then you lemme have it, all five shots? On account of, if I go down that ladder without them bracelets and that, now, necklace, the Rat is gonna gimme the same — an’ I’d rather it come from you!”
The decorative young person opened her eyes.
“Burglar, you’re not going sentimental on me? Who’s the Rat? Your partner?”
“An’ a quite bad actor,” Johnny Dolan explained sadly, “which has cut the heart out of at least one party I positively know about.”
The girl stared on, bosom heaving a little, lips tightening.
“Score one more jackass point for ’em!” she said quite oddly. “They’ve locked me in here like a wild animal and they’ve unplugged my telephone line downstairs; so now, if I want to rouse the blasted family, I’ll have to screech my head off and that’ll scare away your Rat and—” She stopped short; her black eyes flashed at Johnny Dolan. “Ladder, you said?”
“Sure I said ladder. Some slug—”
“Don’t speak for at least a minute!” the peculiar girl commanded. “Don’t even breathe!”
Johnny Dolan gaped at her, sitting there with her hands pressed to her temples and the muzzle of his basement-bargain revolver pointing at the high ceiling. To tell the truth, it seemed that she also was going slightly nuts, the funny, jerky way she was breathing and the way her eyes kept snapping, like she had all her jack on a fifty-to-one shot and he was leading down the stretch by nine lengths.
Then dimples appeared. She smiled, widely and more widely, and Johnny Dolan felt as if he were melting or coming all to pieces. What he meant, he got weak in the joints and the same as hypnotized; for now the doll had hitched much nearer and, believe it or not; it seemed that they were friends!