“Accidents can happen to anybody,” Johnny Dolan reminded him, indulgently. “You’ll talk different when I hand you that jewel-case.”
Mr. McGee slowed, almost to a stop.
“You poor dumb sap!” he muttered wonderingly. “Ain’t there nothin’ at all inside that dome t’ tell yuh she’s a’ready phoned over an’ there’s fifteen troopers waitin’ in them bushes?”
“Lissen, Rat!” Johnny Dolan responded sharply. “You got the moll very wrong. She ain’t one t’ pull that stuff. T’ prove it, I’ll go across them lawns alone!”
“You’re tellin’ me you’ll go alone!” the Rat hooted derisively. “Punk, get this an’ figure out yer own answers. You’ve put the finger on the grandest little set-up I ever made, an’ for a payoff I probably gotta take the laugh I get when them bulls put the collar on you. Believe you me, sucker, you’ll go alone all right; an’ whatever stretch they give you, remember when you get out, this is waitin’ for you!”
Melodramatically, Mr. McGee reached deftly to the back of his neck and slipped out the thin, shiny knife which lived along the upper part of his spine and which he had not felt warranted in trying on a determined young woman with two pistols. “An’ supposin’ there’s one chance in a million you might get inside the drum again without a skinful o’ lead, pull any more funny tricks an’ come out without the stuff, and it’s still waiting for you!”
He had covered the subject in characteristic fashion, of course — and yet Johnny Dolan remained amazingly unperturbed. His lip curled pityingly as he smiled at the Rat.
“You’re batty,” he said. “There won’t be no fifteen troopers, not with a square moll like her. Look, Rat. If there’s one moll like that in the world, there’s two. No sooner we cash in, I’m gonna find the other an’ — oh, are we here a’ready?”
There were no fifteen troopers. There was not even one trooper. Johnny Dolan walked quite fearlessly across the lawn and straight to the ladder, and never a single soul filed one Objection. He stopped and listened. He laughed softly and with great satisfaction. He’d had the moll absolutely right and he was as safe here as home in his own bed.
He felt in his pocket for the big, queer key. Curiously enough, it was still there. He climbed the ladder quite gracefully, and even paused and yawned when he came to the top. Then, all unafraid, happily conscious that he was working under conditions which rarely come once in a burglar’s lifetime, he swung into Miss Rudwell’s bed-chamber and flashed his light about.
Still and empty, to the last detail it was exactly as he had left it. He chuckled even more contentedly and moved across to the Chinese cabinet. Humming softly to himself, he fitted the key and opened the door.
“And nuts to you, Rat!” Johnny Dolan snickered, as he drew out the velvet jewel-case.
Lissen! would he give one loud, hoarse laugh, right in the Rat’s face, when he handed him this case! And would he jab his thumb into the poor pill’s skinny ribs and ask him now about up and up molls! Indeed and indeed he would, Johnny Dolan decided and, all aquiver with pleasant mirth, he tucked the case under his arm and — huh?
Didn’t it seem like something ought to have rattled in there when he did that? What he meant, this jewelry was all loose. Already at the window, Johnny, Dolan paused and scowled heavily. Positively, the jewels were inside this little box, on account of he had seen them put there and then get locked up in the cabinet.
And the moll had tossed him the key, with him watching all the while. But... well, with a bad actor like the Rat you took no chances. Suddenly cold and uncomfortable, Johnny Dolan perched on the edge of the bed and picked at the cover of the jewel-case. It rose almost too readily.
And, save for one folded scrap of paper, the case was empty!
His mouth sagged open. Little beads came again to his forehead. He twitched bewilderedly at the paper and a ten-dollar bill, folded into it, dropped to his palm. And now he had the thing flattened out, now with the flashlight tucked under his arm and illuminating the half-sheet of note paper, he was reading it:
Johnny my lad:
I’ve heard that there is honor among thieves, but I’m not a thief; and, anyhow, we’re likely to be living for quite a while on what these will bring. But here’s something to pay for the gas and — thanks a lot!
F. R.
P. S. The dear old soul in Shanghai — whoever he was — made two of those keys and I always carry one on me. Wasn’t that cute of him?
Well — he had been stunned when he saw the doll crying on this bed. Now, for the second time in the same night in the same room, Johnny Dolan sat there, stunned all over again.
He was getting it slowly, but he was getting it. While she was coughing, understand? The way she’d barked and gargled that time, she could have opened ten cabinets and dumped ten jewel-cases, and still he’d never have heard it. Only to get crossed by that moll!
He stared for a time at the ten-dollar bill and at last mechanically stuffed it in his pocket. So now what? Johnny Dolan scratched his unornamental cranium.
Well, it seemed he had a problem on his hands, huh? One of them problems you guess right the first time or win a pair of white wings for a consolation prize. He could go down and come clean with the Rat and take what the Rat had waiting for him; and maybe some day, if she had that much hard luck, an elderly mother in Rhode Island would hear that her son had been vivisected on some bent-grass in Westchester. Or he would glide down the ladder and, since the Rat was waiting due east of this point, he could strike off in a westerly direction and keep right on going until he could thumb a car headed for Seattle.
The latter course had much the greater appeal. Johnny Dolan tossed aside the case and, hurrying to the window, was about to throw a leg over the sill when he descried the murky, whitish spot moving below. He leaned out and stared. He froze! It was indeed the cap of Rat McGee, who must have taken courage at the complete lack of excitement here!
Johnny Dolan drew back-hurriedly. His knees began to shake, gently and decently at first and then more and more energetically, until they were fairly whizzing around in their sockets and banging against one another. He... he... he had to sit down a minute!
There was a little chair beside him. Johnny Dolan sat on that, swallowing, chattering soundlessly to himself, as monkeys will, shaking his head, trying to make it work fast enough to save the rest of his anatomy... Well, lissen now! He couldn’t sit here like this forever, on account of somebody’d come in the morning to make the bed, or something. So... so when he could stand on these knees, it seemed he’d have to be ready with an alibi that would stick even with the Rat and — what was that?
Near at hand, a door had closed. Near at hand, steps were approaching. Somewhere on this floor, somebody was wide awake and walking around! With one loud gasp, with no second thought at all, Johnny Dolan started over the sill and downward, to take his chances with the Rat.
And then.
The knees did it. Just as he hit the third rung, they seemed to fold like so much wet blotting paper, and it was only by the thickness of a hair that Johnny Dolan succeeded in clutching the ladder. He clutched it far too well. It swung out from the house — and out and still out! — and with another wild gasp he hurled himself against it.