Joe Carney lifted his head.
"What time do I go in? Will the miser be there when I get to the trunk? How much long change do I get out of this?"
The leader of the Duster Band fr.v-ored Carney with a direct, cold stare.
"You get what I give you! Have you anything to say about it?"
Before the bland stare of the gangster king Joe Carney's eyes wavered and fell.
"Nothing," he said hastily. "Put me right on it!"
Stanley Ray smiled faintly.
"I found out this Mrs. Garber gets telephone calls from Levy's Drug Store. At a quarter of twelve I'll telephone the drug store and tell them to send for Mrs. Garber. They'll shoot their kike kid over to the basement. You'll be in the alley at quarter of twelve. When she goes out you go in. I'll stall her on the wire as long as possible. It should take you just about ten minutes to grab the dough and exit. Do you get me?"
Joe Carney reflectively rubbed his beard-rusty chin.
"Yes," he said laconically.
II
The night was hot and unstirring. A full moon rode high in a cloudless sky. The dank smell of the river grew more pronounced. The streets were lined with coatless loungers sprawling at ease in doorway or on stoop.
Joe Carney, shuffling up Tenth Avenue, searched each store window for a clock to tell the hour by. It could not be very late. The avenue was well filled — a number of shops were open and doing business. Again he regretted some prophet had not been employed to prognosticate the fortunes attending the enterprise, In every task he had set out to accomplish he had been warned in advance as to the condition of his luck. If he had been told it was not favorable he had postponed the event. And never once had he been apprehended.
He walked on, hands rammed in the pockets of his coat. He eyed the numbers of the buildings as he passed them, still searching for a clock, growing aware his destination must be only a few blocks distant. He saw the moon creep up over the sullen roof-tops and perceived the canopy of brightly shining stars. He thought of the astrologer of the early afternoon and the jumble of her words.
"A murder!" he chuckled, touching the automatic revolver hung under his left arm. "Swell chance!"
Two more blocks traversed, he came abreast the building in whose basement the wealthy Mrs. Garber resided. And at the same minute his eyes fell upon the face of a clock in a store of the tenement and he started.
The hands of the clock pointed to five minutes of the midnight hour!
Guiltily realizing he had been delinquent and heedless of time, Carney descended a number of steps that led down into the basement. He found himself in a cement-lined passageway. He followed it to its termination and found himself in the clothes-line hung backyard in the rear of the building. An alley ran into the backyard, presided over by a lean cat. Carney removed the animal from his path with a toe of his boot and crouched against the face of the alley's brick wall, ceasing to curse the vivid moonlight only when a barred window of translucent glass leaped out to meet him.
A tingle of anticipation ran through Joe Carney. He found the same barrel Limping Lou had made his observations from and wheeled it close to the window. He mounted it cautiously and applied an ear to the aperture in the window's top. All was quiet within. Obviously, he decided, Mrs. Garber was in the drug store or on her way to it. He was ten minutes late and would have to work rapidly.
The window bars yielded instantly to his grasp. He tore them roughly away, one by one. When the last bar had been wrenched loose, Carney pressed the top half of the window lower and poked a head into the inky blackness of the room. Low but distinctly he heard the monotonous ticking of a clock.
Satisfied that no menace crouched in the gloom, Carney threw a leg over the sash and lowered himself into the room.
Until his eyes could grow accustomed to the murk he stood motionless. A faint odor of gin assailed his nostrils. Faint stirrings tuned his nerves to a high pitch. With a sense of direction fixed firmly in mind, he crept forward. The treasure chest, Stanley Ray had told him, rested to the right, against the room's north wall. As the thought flashed through his mind, his knees came in contact with some low-set object. His outstretched hands clasped the top of something he knew immediately was the trunk, and he exhaled a breath of relief.
The cover of the trunk swung upward at his touch. He felt to make sure that the connecting arms were firmly fastened and delved into a mass of soft garments, placed layer upon layer. These he dug out and flung to the floor, burrowing, mole-like, to reach the apron-wrapped treasure. The scent of gin seemed to envelop him. He wondered why this odor should stir odd recollections — recollections he could not piece together.
He had pulled the last article of clothing from the trunk when the door of the room vibrated with a sudden staccato rapping. Ere its first echoes throbbed into silence, a nasal voice sup-planted the loud knocks with an insistent statement:
"Mrs. Garber! Somebody wants you on the telephone down at Levy's!"
Joe Carney's hands closed convulsively. The clock he had looked upon had been fast or the telephone had marred Stanley Ray's message!
In either case, Mrs. Garber must be within a few feet of him!
The messenger from the drug store began his rapping again. Stiff as stone Joe Carney sought to think. Then, as the knocks ceased for the moment, he heard, from some quarter close at hand, the creak of a bed, a soft footfall — a sibilant swish that told of a garment being donned. Followed at once the rasp of an opening door. A vagrant air current, stirred to new action, touched Carney's forehead — cold against the sweat that had gathered upon it.
Breathless questions rushed through the mind of the intruder. Should he allow the woman to answer the messenger? Or should he strike before she reached the door?
Another series of footfalls wheeled him silently about. Someone was approaching — had stepped through the door. He thought he could detect a muffled shape of shadow moving closer to him. The suspense of waiting was agony. A breath caressed his hot face and a hand touched his arm. Someone gasped.
At the same moment he sprang forward.
With a low growl he felt his fingers dig deep into a soft, stringy throat. Eyes glared into his own; for all of the fact she was a woman, the figure he clutched fought desperately, Carney released his left hand to bring it down with crushing force on the jaw of the struggling figure. Before he had crashed it savagely into the upturned face the woman managed to wrench a scream from between her lips.
Cursing, Carney struck again. He gripped the throat again with the hand he had used with hammer force and shook the woman as a terrier shakes a rat. As if from a distance he heard fresh raps falling upon the door — the voice of the messenger:
"Mrs. Garber! Mrs. Garber!"
Then silence.
Carney relaxed the gripping pressure of his death-working fingers. He found he was talking but knew not what he said. He had killed a woman, but it was her own fault. Hot blood pounded within him — rage and a gloating satisfaction. He felt that at that moment he wished she possessed the nine lives of the cat he had kicked from his path. He would strangle each from her.
And then he realized the apron-wrapped loot would never be his if he stood longer, clutching the limp figure. He opened his hands. The body slumped to the floor. The moon, swinging around, entered the alley and crept into the room, lighting it up like a pale arc-lamp. Carney looked down at the huddle of his victim.