Why—why—of course—that was it — it had to be—for Gunson was confident that he had seen Darragh’s “ghost,” or, at any rate, his counterfeit presentment, leering at him through the dirt-encrusted pane. But a hurried questioning of the proprietor, a Spanish Jew with a fondness for gesticulation in inverse ratio to his almost unintelligible speech, gave him pause—but only for a moment. Gunson, however, made a rather peculiar purchase, which he bestowed carefully in an inner pocket.
Masterman, after all, need not have entered that shop; in the second place he was far too shrewd a malefactor for that. But the suggestion remained, fantastic, incredible as he owned it to himself to be, and Gunson, at the corner of the street had had it corroborated, so to speak, when a wizened nondescript rose up almost at his elbow.
“Darragh — Chicken-Foot — he’s at Gaspipe’s—he said t’ tell youse he’d wait.”
And Gunson, without more ado had sought the derelict and the saloon of Gaspipe Looie, perhaps five minutes after the departure of the vagrant, and B-his shadow.
Looie knew nothing—of course. That was to be expected. Gunson could spare no time to tighten the thumbscrews of his inquisition. It was going on for eleven. He hurried.
“That — rumhound — Darragh been here lately, Looie?” he had asked.
For a moment as he faced the swart Syracusan behind his stained and battered bar Gunson was conscious of a movement at his back: a ripple, an eddy, a swift, sudden current of electric tension. In the stained and spotted mirror he could see but little, but at Looie’s reply of “Naw—theesa bum — he go—eight-nine o’clock,” and a look which he fancied that he saw in the sullen, furtive eyes of the saloonkeeper, Gunson whirled on his heel in a lightning pivot.
They came at him in a headlong rush, silent, no guns—knives out, life-preservers—an evil ring of dark faces and clutching hands... Something hissed in a thin-drawn whine at the level of his cheek—the knife clanged, quivering, in the mahogany. Voices rose, bestial, snarling: “Croak him... croak th’ bull!” A slungshot at the end of a swart, hairy arm, drove over his shoulder.
Gunson had been trained up from the streets, the alleys. To a habit of lightning decision was added the perfect coordination of muscles steel-hard and willow-withed. Now he multiplied himself—the fighting flame of his Norse forebears rising to a Baresark fury at the thought that these were the paid hirelings, doubtless, of the man who, he was now convinced, had murdered Sinsabaugh. His fist, behind it the weight of two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, crashed into a grinning face. The face was blotted out.
Hemmed in as he was, there was no time for gunplay—it was fist and elbow against knife and club in a ferocious free-for-all of which the issue could not be long in doubt.
He went to one knee under the glancing impact of a sandbag, heaved upward, shook his head as a pugilist rallies his whirling wits—and then, muscle and mind and body, hurled himself in one furious, headlong dive into and through that vicious ring of steel. The spank of a clean-cut blow was followed by a groaning curse, and for the first time the crash of an automatic, and the dull tsung of splintered glass.
A red-hot needle seared through his cheek as, ducking under the outstretched arm of the last of his attackers, his swinging uppercut was followed by a grunt and a slumping fall. Then he was through the swinging doors — and away.
They would not follow him—of that he was reasonably certain—but nevertheless he went forward at a lunging run, jerking his service pistol from its holster as he approached the black maw of the alley.
Then—he stumbled—went to his hands and knees—fumbled a moment in the darkness, produced his pocket flash. And in the radius of that clear beam he saw, staring up at him from the cobbles, the dead face, with its staring eyes and brief, twisted grin, of Chicken-Foot Darragh.
Masterman, secure in the knowledge that his decoy had by this time accomplished his purpose (he had had Gunson trailed for the best part of the evening) went swiftly to a room which he kept in a slightly more respectable neighborhood.
This he had used often enough in the past—Gunson was aware of it, of course. Now, with that healthy fatigue which is the prerogative of thieves and murderers as well as of honest men, Masterman flung himself on the bed. He was dog-tired, so much so that he had removed his coat and hat, merely, before he was breathing easily, like a man whose conscience had never been burdened with anything heavier than a hearty dinner.
As a matter of fact, he had bent over to unlace his shoes, but in the very act sleep had overtaken him. If he had done so, this story might never have been written—but he did not. And he had had them on since the night of Sinsabaugh’s death, just twenty-four hours previous.
It had required no very special keenness on the part of Gunson to deduce that Masterman would do the very thing that he had done—seek his room. The detective knew the address, and, anyway, the obvious had its importance — he would try here first, at any rate.
Slipping in quietly by the side door (the room was over a saloon on a quiet street) Gunson, unseen, mounted the narrow stair—listened a moment at a door on the second landing—turned the knob noiselessly—unlocked the door by turning the key from the outside with a long, thin wire made for this purpose — and entered.
And so—Masterman awoke at a dazzle of light which struck him full in the eyes. He blinked owlishly—then sat upright with a jerk, his hand reaching for his gun and then falling at his side at the crisp voice of the detective:
“I’ve got you covered, Masterman.”
The yegg cursed, stared a moment wildly; then his pig eyes snapped evilly as Gunson’s other hand, reaching upward behind him, turned up the light. Gunson, putting away his flashlight, bent a hard eye on his prisoner.
“I want you, Masterman,” he said evenly, “you rotten killer—step lively, now—you hear?”
But Masterman, his composure returning after that first, amazed glance which had assured him that Gunson was unarmed, spoke, sneeringly confident:
“You’ve got nothing on me, Gunson,” he said, his heavy face, with its blue-shaven jowls, assuming a satiric mask. “You can’t prove nothing.”
“I have—or rather you have,” replied Gunson cryptically, “and I can prove everything,” he was beginning. “Shake a leg now—” when abruptly there came a startling reversal.
Not for nothing had Masterman abode aforetime in that haven of the dwellers by night—Paris, of the thousand eyes. And among other accomplishments of that grim underworld of the Apache, most ruthless of his kind, had he acquired a more than average efficiency in the art of La Savate. Now, at Gunson’s crisp command, he came suddenly into action.
His right foot, shod with its pointed boot, swung upward in a bone-smashing kick, almost too deadly swift for the eye to follow, aimed at the detective’s face. The impact of that bruising kick would mean unconsciousness, a broken jaw—or worse.
But if Masterman was consummate in the attack, in the lightning upthrust of that deadly lunge, like the swift swing of a javelin, Gunson was not unprepared. There is but one parry for that abrupt passade: a single, deft movement, an estoppel as swift and certain as the delivery of the kick itself.
Gunson moved his head a scant half inch to the right, as a boxer evades the whiplash of a straight left, his hand at the same instant curving in a short arc. His fingers closed like iron about the yegg’s ankle—there came a quick heave, an abrupt explosion of movement, and Masterman crashed downward to the floor.