“Undoubtedly you have no liking for district attorneys. But I feel that that would hardly drive you to lie in wait on some side road until I went past. Besides, how would you know, that I was ordered up to the pen? No, Mitchell, I’m reluctantly compelled to believe that there’s somebody behind you. Don’t you want to tell me who it is or what you know about that five million dollars?”
Mitchell did not even part his lips.
“Mr. Smythe’s a nice kind employer, isn’t he, Mitchell? Fancy his giving you a job, with your record, the minute you lost your employment inside. Kind-hearted isn’t the word for it. It must have wounded his sensibilities to have his client, Herrington, go to the chair, don’t you think? Mr. Smythe didn’t say anything about five million to you, did he? Well, perhaps he wouldn’t want to spoil you. I think I’ll have to take up that five million with Mr. Smythe very soon. Perhaps I can drag something out of him about it. Do you think I can?”
Silence. Mitchell waited, flat face to the wall; thick lips tightly compressed.
“Lie down, Mitchell,” Mark commanded genially. He stepped back as he finished the job. “You’ll get flat-footed, standing there like that. And then they’ll take you for a policeman. You wouldn’t like that, would you? And maybe the police wouldn’t, either. Lie down flat while I do a bit of telephoning.”
Mitchell obeyed the command, although he took a step or two out from the wall before he did so. Mark Telfair noted that slight movement, which took his prisoner closer to the shelter of the covered sedan. He did not object.
“Be patient,” he advised, and with the flashlight showing the way, took a dozen steps toward the telephone that rested on a wooden shelf against one side of the building. Here he turned the light back toward his captive. The bulk of the sedan prevented him from seeing Mitchell’s outstretched form. He made no comment upon this fact.
He picked up the receiver and gave a number — the number of the penitentiary. Deputy Warden Crawford was still in his office, and answered at once, somewhat querulously.
“Where did you go?” the warden inquired. “First Naylor — then you! Gone without a word!”
“I’m still looking for that five million, and I’m making progress,” Mark Telfair replied. He made no effort to speak so softly that Chink Mitchell could not hear; neither did he raise his voice above a confidential murmur. “I’ve got Mitchell tied up in Smythe’s garage, Warden.”
“Smythe’s garage! Mitchell? You think he—”
“The car that shoved me off the road is here, too, with the fender newly painted. That’s all I’ve discovered so far, Warden, but I’ll get search warrants out in the morning and comb this whole place over for more evidence. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t give the game away. I was afraid you’d call up Smythe and ask him if he’d seen me. I want everything kept quiet until I can act.”
“It’s incredible!” John Crawford exclaimed. His voice revealed plainly his bewilderment. “You’re telling me, by inference, at least, that a reputable lawyer deliberately attempted to hold up and injure an assistant district attorney, proceeding on a mission of life and death for the governor himself. It’s—”
Mark Telfair ceased to listen to the voice on the telephone. He lowered the receiver from his ear and listened instead to the stealthiest of sounds from in front of the linen-covered sedan. But he did not turn his light that way; nor did he speak to Mitchell. For a moment a fleeting grin swept over his face; then he turned to the telephone again.
“Five million is a lot of money — and it’s handy to have, especially when a man has a big estate to keep up,” he said. “Warden, could you lend me a trustworthy keeper to watch Mitchell until morning? I know it isn’t strictly legal. But if I call in the police now it will leak out as sure as fate — and I want Smythe to have a good night’s sleep.”
“You mean that Smythe knows where that five million is located — that if he got an inkling he was suspected he might... ah... take steps before dawn to hide it beyond all hope of finding?”
“Something like that. It would be the correct procedure for Smythe, would it not?”
“I suppose so — if you’re right,” Warden Crawford replied unwillingly. “Well — I’ll send you a man.”
“Fine! I need only one. No hurry about it. We’re quite comfortable — both—”
From the rear of the garage he heard a sudden movement; then a splintering crash. Looking up, he had a momentary glimpse of a tire vanishing out of the window above the work bench. A shower of glass fell tinkling to the ground. Then absolute silence within the garage. Mark grinned.
“He’s got away!” Mark roared dramatically through the telephone. “Escaped through a window!”
Stamping loudly, he rushed out the door and around the corner of the building. Then he stopped abruptly and flattened himself out against the side of the building, as he had done once before that night.
Hardly had he taken cover when Chink Mitchell came dashing out of the door. He was unencumbered by wire and was barefoot, with his shoes in his hands. He darted across the driveway in front of the garage. His naked feet made no sound. He flung himself headlong through a gap in the privet hedge around the pond; then dropped into a flower bed beyond and lay still. In the vague light of the moon his body seemed to merge into the ground.
Only the fact that Mark, himself in the deep shadow of the garage, had followed Mitchell’s course intently made it possible for him to identify that blur in the garden as a man’s prone body. Mark did not move. Mitchell was in a position to watch the garage and everything that went on around the front and one side.
A minute dragged by, and then another. No sound or abrupt lighting of the house indicated that the sound of breaking glass had roused anyone there.
The stubborn deadlock of watcher and watched continued in utter immobility. And then, abruptly, Mark Telfair broke the spell.
He walked boldly around the corner to the front of the garage, in plain sight of Mitchell. He moved slowly, like a man spent from running. He stepped close to the limousine, still standing outside, and entered the black recesses of the garage.
The moment he walked into the shadows within he swung around alertly. He could still see the blotch made in the flower bed by Mitchell’s body. The man did not move.
Mark Telfair picked up the telephone. He spoke into it loudly, but there was no one on the other end. He spoke again, as if concluding his conversation, and then hung up.
He left the garage. With never a turn of his head toward Mitchell’s hiding place he hurried purposefully down the driveway in the direction of the service entrance. He walked not on the gravel, but along the grassy margin, where his feet made little sound. And he kept moving steadily along until he reached the point where the driveway curved. Past this curve he stopped abruptly and looked around. He could see no sign of Chink Mitchell.
With the greatest caution he eased his long body through the hedge that bordered the driveway. Then, on hands and knees, he crept along toward the margin of the pond. He was now almost opposite Mitchell’s place of refuge. Sinking down onto his chest near a lower hedge alongside a gravel path, he stared intently across the pond.
He had lost the exact position where Mitchell lay. He could see nothing that indicated a man’s body lying in the long flower bed on the other side of the water. He rose on his elbows a bit, staring intently. The profusion of hedges and flower beds around the sunken lily pond made his search more difficult. And then, suddenly, he caught sight of Mitchell.
Chapter VIII
The Man With the Knife
The man had not changed his location. Now he was rising cautiously to his feet. He stood upright, listened, then slipped through the gap in the hedge to peer down the driveway in the direction in which Mark Telfair had vanished. In a moment he slunk through the hedge again. He approached the edge of the pond and stopped to look intently toward the house.