It opened at his touch with scarce a creak.
Blumfeld passed into stark blackness perfumed with the reek of a kerosene lamp. Its odor took him carefully across the room. He discovered the location of the lamp and felt its chimney. Its warmth told him it had been extinguished only a short time.
Blumfeld turned slowly. He must learn if this room was the bedchamber of the inventor or not. He longed to kindle a match, but knew its glare would betray him if Johnson was awake. He began to step forward, laying his hand against the furniture it encountered. He touched a chair and a small table, but they told him nothing. He had no way of knowing where he was until his knees suddenly came in contact with something cold and hard and investigation caused him to expel a breath of relief. His exploring hands felt a mattress and a blanket.
While he considered the next move, Blumfeld stiffened cautiously. The bed creaked with the weight of some one turning over in it. After what seemed an eternity, a thin, husky voice came out of the staring murk.
“I have a fully loaded revolver covering you! I will—”
Blumfeld did not wait to hear the rest of it. With a snarl he flung himself forward. He crashed against a figure that fell back with a soft cry, a cry that was abruptly shut off by the grip of his fingers. Something hard clattered to the floor with a dull, metallic ring. Wisps of beard scratched Blumfeld’s face. With his free hand he ripped a piece from the blanket, wadded it together and stuffed it into the man’s mouth, forcing his jaws open and digging a knee into his stomach so that no scream might awake discordant echoes. When he had neatly gagged his victim he ended weak struggles with a vicious blow and using other strips of the blanket bound Johnson’s wrists and ankles tightly together.
Stepping away from the bed Blumfeld struck a match.
He turned up the wick of the oil lamp and lighted it. The room boasted two windows and both displayed drawn shades. It was sparsely furnished as a bedroom, containing a bureau with a mirror, table, chair and trunk. Blumfeld dropped down on the top of the trunk. He dug out the stub of a cigarette from his pocket and after kindling it looked casually at the trussed up man on the bed. He grinned when the faded blue eyes met his bravely and steadily.
“I came back,” Blumfeld said. “I came back to get them ten thousand smackers you were bragging about. If you come clean with me you won’t get hurt. If you try any funny stuff you’ll never go to Rochester. You’ll go to a place where money ain’t no use. Nod your head if you understand.”
The inventor nodded. Blumfeld picked up the revolver from the floor and pocketed it.
“Are you ready to tell me where the money is at? Nod yes or no.”
The old man inclined his head. Blumfeld crossed to him and leaned over.
“I’m going to slip the gag out of your peep. If you open your trap to yell I’ll cave in your conk!”
He removed the makeshift gag and the inventor licked his lips.
“C’mon, spit out the dope!” Blumfeld ordered impatiently.
“I will tell you nothing!” the old man said huskily. “What it took me twenty years to earn I will share with no one! No matter what you do to me no information will pass my lips! I will meet my fate unafraid! And I will know that you cannot escape the consequences of your crime! The work of my hand and the child of my brain will reach out, even from the grave, and overtake you!”
With a snarl Blumfeld jammed the gag back into the inventor’s mouth. He pushed the old man savagely back among the pillows and struck him again with his fist. For a few minutes he sat silent, his face dark with thought. At length he stood up, slapped his thigh with a exclamation and walked to the lamp. He opened the blade of his heavy knife and laid it across the mouth of the chimney, looking back at the cot with a wide grin.
“Maybe a little burning on the soles of your feet will make you loosen up! I’ll torture you before I croak you, and even if you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll find out! I’ll turn these rooms upside down!”
He lifted the knife from the chimney and saw that its blade had turned white-hot. He wrapped his handkerchief around the handle and with a single move drew the sheets and blankets off the bed...
III
Three days later as Blumfeld slouched out of the east side lodging-house where he roomed, a man stepped across the pavement and laid a hand on his arm. Synchronously another man stepped out of the passing crowd and caught hold of his left arm, moving it up and out.
Before Blumfeld could draw a breath, something cold encircled each wrist—a sharp click sounded.
“You are wanted, Lefty!” the first man said briefly. “Charge of bumping off Old Man Johnson, the inventor, down on Christopher Square last week!”
Blumfeld lifted his face, his lips drawn back over his yellow teeth.
“You’re crazy with the heat!” he snarled. “I haven’t been on Christopher Square in two weeks. I’ve been away. I’ve been in Chi—”
The second man smiled.
“There is no use of lying, Lefty. We have Old Man Johnson’s invention down at headquarters. It showed us who croaked him and told us who to look for. We’ve got the man — you are he!”
Blumfeld licked his lips.
“What invention are you talking about?”
His first captor exchanged a look with his companion.
“Something that’s going to stand this country on its ear when it hears about it,” he answered. “The old man invented a mirror. He had one in the bureau in his bedroom. It’s a mirror that retains the reflection of the last person who passes before it.”...
The Half-Asleep Girl
by William H. Kofoed
I
The street was squalid, dirty. On either side a row of rickety frame houses, leaning like drunken sailors one upon the other, warned idle trespassers of the character of the neighborhood. The few people who traversed it now in the autumn twilight walked quickly and with many a furtive, sidewise glance, as though in some ancient land of gnomes and ogres, where, behind every wall, lurked an unknown horror.
That is, all but young Fleming Metcalf Knibbs. It is doubtful that Knibbs could achieve the furtive if his life depended on it. He was one of those straightforward chaps who insist that black is black, and, even though a sizable check be the inducement, refuse to call it gray. Of course, in reality, no check could possibly prove an inducement to young Knibbs, as his private fortune was known to flirt with seven figures; but the comparison is none the less illuminating on that account.
Nor was he without a sense of humor, or of balance: humor enough to enjoy all phases of life, balance enough to realize that not in money alone does one find happiness.
But his humor bordered on the romantic and adventurous, almost indiscreetly so. He was given to prowling in little-frequented quarters, arid every now and again he would get himself in trouble, which he enjoyed hugely.
Moving along the sordid thoroughfare, his ever-curious eyes taking in its details, young Knibbs came at length to a house more rickety, if possible, than the rest, whose door was at that moment slowly opening. In the shadow he glimpsed white-stockinged ankles and slippers below a dark skirt.
Knibbs was passing as the girl descended the steps. Her movements were so softly gliding as to be almost ethereal, and, visualizing her as emerging from a haze, he recalled a famous picture of a wood nymph shrouded in twilight mist. At first her face was indistinct, then suddenly he caught it, like a ray of light, and stood transfixed by its strange charm.