How Many Cards?/Chapter 12

FEW minutes before eight o'clock that evening a slouching figure strolled around the corner of a shabby street not far from the wide avenue which bordered the park and took up his stand midway the block. He leaned nonchalantly against an area railing with a cigarette hanging from his lips and his hat pushed far back on his head so that the rays from a nearby street lamp fell full upon his square-jawed but not uncomely face.

He might have been a respectable young artisan out to keep a tryst with the girl of his choice or a mere idler of the neighborhood, but there was a curious contrast between the indolence of his attitude and the covertly alert expression in the gaze which he shifted alternately from the westward corner to the precinct station house a few yards away.

The traffic of the day had ceased but the street was alive with shop-keepers and denizens of the modest flats on either side of the way, who, freed from the routine of work, were thronging out for a breath of the balmy spring air. Two figures, one tall and lanky and the other shorter and heavy-set, rounded the corner, mingling with the passers-by, and approached the youthful lounger. They passed with no sign of recognition but as soon as they had gone a few paces beyond he threw away his cigarette and sauntered off in the direction in which they had first appeared.

A short distance from the door of the station house the two newcomers halted, the taller facing it, the other with his back turned squarely.

"Loosen up, Denny, and act careless like!" warned the latter. "If you had whiskers you'd look for all the world like a cat watching a mouse hole! 'Tis well you took up fire fighting for you would never have made a first class dick!"

"Is that so!" retorted Dennis. "I mind a time when you mistook a murdering blackguard for a member of the British aristocracy—not but what the two would be a possible combination—and 'twas a blind man that beat you to the truth! How can I tell it's the right man we'll be following when he comes out of there, and me never laying eyes on him before, if I don't watch?"

"You could tell him with the tail of a glance," McCarty assured him. "He looks like a preacher that's burdened with the sins of this world and hasn't been eating regular. If I don't miss my guess he'll turn in this direction, so the minute you see him begin to talk loud but you needn't shout enough to attract his attention and don't call me 'Mac.' Just make him think you're minding your own business."

"And what'll I be talking about?" Dennis demanded in some alarm. "I'm no hand at speech—Glory be! Here he comes!"

A tall, spare figure in clerical black had appeared in the doorway of the station house and paused, gazing deliberately up and down the street. Dennis shot out a lean arm in a gesture that was intended to be argumentative.

"I'll never believe it of Terry!" he declared in a loud, indignant tone. "He's not the lad to go back on his friends and what's the good of being a citizen and having a vote if you can't swing it to them that'll put something your way later?—He's turned this way! Now he's coming!—As I was saying, it's the persuading tongue in his head that Terry has, all right, and the boys are with him. If he says he'll carry the ward for a friend he'll do it!"

"And if he goes around looking for a polling place in the spring of the year he's liable to be run in for a nut!" McCarty remarked disgustedly, for Frank Hill had passed them and was striding toward the Avenue. "'Tis a fine subject you picked for your discourse, but come on; I think I know where our bird is headed for but he's only calling the inspector's bluff and playing safe."

With one accord they turned and started off in the wake of that deliberate figure ahead and as they passed the corner the slouching youth reappeared from nowhere and trailed along unobtrusively in the rear.

After that first comprehensive glance about him Hill did not even look back, but walked on as though lost in thought yet with a definite objective in view. He crossed an intersecting avenue or two and then, on reaching the fashionable thoroughfare on the farther side of which rose the park wall, he turned north.

"Where's he making for?" muttered Dennis.

"Where would any faithful employee be going when he's freed from being under an unjust suspicion but back to the place where he works?" McCarty returned. "I told you he'd play safe. 'Tis the Creveling house, no less, that he's headed for now and there it is just ahead."

They slackened their pace and were a full block behind when Hill stopped at the tradesmen's entrance of the white stone house and pulled out his key. Flattening themselves in the shadow of the same cornice beneath which McCarty had effaced himself when he trailed the embryo burglar on the previous night they saw him unlock the door and dis- appear within.

"And now what?" Dennis demanded. "Here comes Martin; are you going to leave him to watch the place?"

"There's a blank wall that surrounds the yard space at the rear like a well with never a door nor an opening that a man could crawl through as far as I could see this morning, but I'm taking no chances," McCarty responded. "The houses on both sides of the Crevelings are closed but there might be a way he could get out, at that.—Martin!" he added as the detective from headquarters approached. "Go back a couple of blocks, cross the avenue and climb over the park wall; creep along the other side of it till you are just opposite the Creveling house—'tis that white one there in the middle of the next block—and watch both doors. You got a good look at Hill?"

"Sure; down at headquarters to-day, when the chief was hauling him over the coals," Martin replied. "Me and Yost both give him the once-over. He ain't ever been mugged, I could swear to that."

"Well, keep your eyes peeled and if he comes out again give a squeeze to this and then trail him." From beneath his coat McCarty produced an object not unlike a small motor horn and handed it to the other. "If he don't come out stay where you'll be till you hear two quick honks of a horn like that one, or we join you, if it's morning. Understand?"

"Right, Mac." Martin grinned at Denny. "The chief thought your side kick here would be with you. I could tell a mile off, Riordan, that you were on the job!"

He walked off chuckling at Dennis' discomfiture and McCarty remarked consolingly:

"Never you mind, Denny, every man to his work and it's your own line you'll be following to-night."

"'My own line'?" Dennis repeated. "You're not thinking of starting a fire, are you, Mac?"

"No, but there may be a bit of wall-scaling to be done and you're the lad for it. 'Tis a hard place to reach, though, and I've no mind to be nabbed by pig-headed householders for breaking and entering. Clancy ought to happen along soon on his beat and we'll wait for him."

"But why would this fellow Hill go back to the house first if he's got something else on his mind?" Dennis was disposed to argument. "There's little Creveling needs of a valet now."

"For an alibi; he'll not be caught again without one," McCarty replied. "It was a woman's voice, you know, that telephoned out to the Waverly country place, and I'm thinking that 'tis maybe because of a woman that Hill won't open his mouth about where he was last night."

"It might not be the same woman, though," Dennis suggested helpfully. "Perhaps the woman that 'phoned was put up to it by the man that killed Creveling."

"The one that killed Creveling put nobody else up to doing any of the dirty work, Denny," McCarty said after a pause. "'Twas a lone hand that was played last night; the hand that held the pistol. Whoever did the 'phoning found out about it somehow, and was playing a different game.—There's Clancy, now, coming out of that areaway and wiping the mouth of him on the back of his hand! The Force is not what it used to be when I was pounding my beat!"

"How're they coming, boys?" Clancy greeted them with a cheerful grin. "Thought you'd be somewhere around, Mac, and I might have known Riordan would be with you. I know as well as you do that 'twas no suicide last night but I'm glad the inspector took it out of my hands; it'll be a hard nut to crack!"

"We've been waiting for you, Clancy." McCarty spoke without preamble. "From what we observed just now you seem to be on good terms with the help in the houses along here; couldn't you get the cook in one of those on the next block to let us go through and into their back yard? We'll probably be wanting to come out the same way along about morning, but if we don't there'll be nothing to kick up a racket about. It'll be just as well, though, if you pick out one that don't know the servants at the Crevelings'."

"Sure, that's easy!" Clancy exclaimed. "Getting you through, I mean. As to keeping it from the help at the Crevelings', the cook at the de Forests' two doors away had a run-in with that Sarah, the butler's wife, and she won't speak to any of them. Her and me are real friendly and many's the hot cup of coffee she's given me on the cold nights this past winter. She'll let you through on my say-so."

The de Forests' cook proved to be a buxom, good-natured person and Dennis unexpectedly scored a hit by ascertaining that she came from the same county as he in the old country. They took leave of Clancy and she led them through the kitchen and scullery out to an immaculate asphalted yard, its low fences covered with stout wisteria vines just feathering into bloom.

"If it's over the walls you want to go, man dear, there's a small, little ladder here that'll hold the two of you one at a time, and you can pull it up after you and let it down the other side," she suggested. "You'll get no interference from next door for the house is closed and beyond is the one where the poor gentleman killed himself last night. 'Tis some one in one of the side street houses that you've a warrant for, isn't it?"

McCarty nodded.

"Well, you'll find the fences easy; it's a good thing for you that it is not the Creveling house you want to get into for 'tis blockaded at the rear like a fort, though heaven knows why. 'Twas some whim, maybe, of the poor soul that sent a bullet through his own heart.—And to think," she added with a trace of awe in her tones, "I heard the very shot!"

"You did!" McCarty dropped his end of the ladder and beamed upon her. "If the reporters knew that I suppose they'd be after you like flies around honey! And how do you know 'twas that shot you heard? What time was it?"

"At quarter of two in the morning. I know, for my family, the de Forests, had come home awhile before from a dance and waked me up; we've a houseparty of young folks and the noise they made saying 'good night' would have roused the saints! I got up and looked at my clock and I was just climbing back into bed again when I heard a bang like the roof was coming off! I waited but nothing else happened and I made up my mind a policeman must have shot a stray dog over in the park. It was only when the papers came out this afternoon that I learned what it really was."

"Did any one else in the house hear it, too?" McCarty asked.

"No; at least, none of the help did and the butler and footmen said that the family talked about nothing else at dinner and somebody said 'twas funny that the shot wasn't heard.—I'll be up until near midnight writing letters in the servants' dining-room in the front basement if you're coming back this way, and I've no doubt I can find a bit of supper for you," she continued hospitably.

They thanked her and when she had withdrawn into the house Dennis asked:

"Well, Mac, what's the game now?"

"Let's get over in the next yard and pull the ladder with us," responded McCarty "I want to have a look at the rear of the closed house.'"

They scaled the fence without difficulty and depositing the ladder in the grass plot of the second yard they turned to reconnoiter.

"Do you think, Denny, that you could get up to one of the window sills on the third floor? You could see over the Crevelings' wall then."

"Do I think I could walk up a pair of stairs with my eyes shut?" retorted Dennis. "If 'twas for that you dragged the ladder along, you can hoist it back again where it belongs. With them sills and lintels sticking out the way they do, a small boy could reach the roof!"

Without further speech he shed his coat and hat and began to clamber up as agilely as a monkey while McCarty watched from below in a solicitude that was almost ludicrously maternal. At length he reached the third floor and perching himself on a broad window ledge, peered over the high wall into the blind alley at the rear of the Creveling house.

"What do you see?" McCarty demanded in a hoarse whisper.

"Nothing," responded Dennis laconically. "'Tis as bright as day, for the light is streaming out from the windows at the back and the court, or whatever it is, is as bare as the palm of your hand."

"Do you see no sign of an opening?"

"There's a back door to the house, but it's closed tight." Dennis leaned over and craned his neck downward. "If it's in the wall you mean, there's not so much as a loose brick. Is that all you wanted to know?"

He prepared to descend but McCarty halted him.

"Not by a long shot, it isn't! You'll stay where you are, Denny, my lad, until something happens or we're sure that it won't, and you'd best be making yourself comfortable for it's likely there'll be a long wait ahead of you. 'Tis barely nine o'clock now."

And a long wait it proved to be. Dennis shifted about from time to time but stuck faithfully at his post and McCarty paced back and forth upon the narrow strip of sod which lined the fence. An hour passed, then another, and the lights in the rear of the neighboring houses began to go out, one by one, but still there came no muffled honk from the horn which McCarty had given to Martin and no sign from the watcher above.

The back of the Creveling house had long since been dark and no sound issued from it. McCarty began to feel an inward misgiving. Had his train of reasoning been at fault? There was so much to be done, so many loose threads to be gathered up in this strange tangle of events. Was he wasting precious time? Had he allowed himself to be turned aside from the main issue by the chance hint of a gossiping servant while the real slayer of Eugene Creveling escaped?

He told himself miserably that he should have had them watched, the whole lot of them! Mrs. Waverly and Mrs. Creveling were out of it, and the O'Rourkes were not even to be considered, but anything could be expected from the rest of them! Even that alibi of the Fords might have been cooked up between them and Cutter, though what common interest they all had in blocking the investigation—

"Whisht!" A sibilant command from Dennis broke in upon McCarty's pessimistic meditation and brought him up standing. "There's a light just flashed up for a minute in the third floor window nearest the farther wall! You'd have seen it yourself if you'd not been sleep-walking I Look up! There it is again!"

McCarty was already straining his eyes up into the darkness and now he saw a tiny pin point of light gleam out over the wall from the direction of the window indicated, sweep across space like a streak of distant lightning and vanish.

"Pocket electric torch!" he ejaculated softly, prancing in the sudden excitement of renewed hope. "What's going on, Denny? I can't see through a brick wall—!"

"For the love of God, stop your havering!" came from above in a fierce, far-carrying whisper and McCarty subsided, mentally cursing the increasing girth and lack of physical practice which prevented him from reaching the point of vantage held by his companion. He had not long to remain in suspense, however, for almost immediately the silence of the night was broken by the sound of a window being stealthily raised.

Dennis gesticulated violently and then shrank back into the concealment of the overhanging lintel while McCarty gazed breathlessly but impotently upward.

There came a curious scratching noise which seemed to be receding; the light flashed again fainter than before and then came the sound of a soft thud. In an instant Dennis' long arms and legs writhed out of the shadows and he scrambled down with perilous haste to land at McCarty's feet.

"Some one—a man—got out of that window, straddled the wall and climbed down the back of that next house!" he exclaimed. "He'll be off across fences to the next street north and we'll lose him!"

"Like hell we will!" McCarty seized the despised ladder and setting it against the fence of the de Forests' yard he swarmed up it and hanging by his hands, dropped with a grunt to the ground. Dennis was after him in a twinkling and they tore through the scullery and kitchen, nearly bowling over the astonished cook who met them in the front hall.

Without a word to her they dashed out into the areaway and once on the avenue McCarty paused only to produce his horn and sound it twice before he set out on a run for the northern corner.

The street was deserted save for the solitary figure of a man walking rapidly eastward far down the block, and without wasting speech or looking backward for their ally they took up the trail.

It proved to be a straight one for several blocks and the two following in the shadows exercised all the more caution for that, but the man appeared to have no suspicion of their espionage. Intent only upon his errand the rapidity of his stride increased until he all but broke into a run, but at Third Avenue he halted abruptly.

"If he picks up a taxi by any chance of dumb luck we're lost!" McCarty panted. "There'd not be but one night hawk along this way before dawn!"

But no taxi appeared and the car tracks stretched away blankly into the darkness. After waiting irresolutely for a minute or two the man turned south and started off once more with his quick, nervous stride and McCarty and Dennis trailed along but more cautiously still, for now their quarry glanced constantly back over his shoulder.

He was almost two blocks ahead when he halted again at the curb, and at the same moment there came to their ears the hum and rattle of a car approaching from behind. Without giving himself time to think McCarty sprang out into the middle of the avenue and swung aboard the car as it passed, while Dennis clung tenaciously to the upright bar, heedless of the profanity of the outraged conductor, and succeeded in scrambling up, narrowly missing a pillar of the elevated railway structure.

McCarty had already produced two nickels and they made their way to the forward part of the car, seating themselves with hunched shoulders turned to the entrance.

"That was a narrow squeak!" breathed Dennis. "We've lost Martin now if ever he was trailing behind. 'Twill be a fine note if the car don't stop for your man, Mac, or if he changes his mind!"

"If you borrowed money the way you borrow trouble, Denny, you'd not have a friend left in the world," McCarty observed. "The car's slowing down now, and as for Martin I never knew him to get left yet!"

The car did indeed stop at the second corner, and as it resumed its way Dennis could not resist a swift glance over the few passengers behind.

"It's Hill, all right!" he announced in a sepulchral whisper. "He's dropped into a seat by the rear door and he looks like the ghost of himself! Something must have happened him, the night, since he went back to the Creveling house!"

"'Tis what's on the mind of him, more like," surmised McCarty grimly.

"You think 'twas him killed—?"

"I do not!" McCarty interrupted. "If I did I'd have my two hands on him now, and well you know it! Don't look around again till you hear the buzzer."

To Dennis' edged nerves the ride downtown seemed interminable. Twice the buzzer sounded and twice his eyes nearly crossed in the haste and eagerness of his backward glance, but Hill still slumped in his seat with his head drooping over upon his breast.

"Is it to the Bowery he's going?" he muttered after the second disappointment. "No wonder he stood looking for the car! 'Tis a fine walk we'd have had—!"

"Are you a cripple?" demanded McCarty. "We're not even to Thirty-fourth Street yet, and 'tis not a fire we're going to, you know!—There goes the buzzer again."

"And it's him! He's reaching up with his finger on the button!" Dennis made as if to rise, but McCarty laid a heavy hand on his knee.

"Sit still and let your head fall over as if you were asleep!" he ordered. "The fellow's got to pass us to get out front. Don't move till I say the word!"

The two relaxed figures apparently lost in slumber were not calculated to arrest the eye of a fellow passenger making for the exit and Frank Hill's glance did not even include them as he passed and descended from the car. As it started again Dennis straightened and looked quickly out of the window.

"He didn't cross the tracks; he's heading west," he observed. "After coming all this way are we going to ride on—?"

But McCarty had risen and sounded the buzzer in his turn and when the car halted again at the next corner they literally flung themselves off. Frank Hill was nowhere in sight and the avenue itself seemed utterly deserted.

"There, you see!" exclaimed Dennis disgustedly as they hurried back to the street at which the valet had alighted. "I told you we'd lose him! If you'd have listened to me—there's no one at all in the side street either way."

For answer McCarty stopped abruptly at the corner and pointed through the glass show window of the all-night drugstore, the lights of which were the only oases in the desert of darkness about them. Hill was standing at the cigar counter engaged in conversation with the weary-eyed clerk and it was evident that they were old acquaintances.

Dennis and McCarty had only time to withdraw into a neighboring doorway when Hill reappeared and rounding the corner started briskly westward. The others followed just in time to see him almost collide with a second figure which had been lurking in the deeper shadows of a high stoop. Both sidestepped instantly and Hill continued his way, but though he walked faster even than before his shoulders hunched forward despondently, almost furtively, and a certain elasticity seemed gone from his stride.

"Martin!" McCarty swore beneath his breath as the figure approached them sheepishly. "So 'twas you pulled that bonehead play! You're a disgrace to the Force!"

"However in the world did you get here?" Dennis demanded, adding with sly satisfaction: "You've scared off our bird, all right! Any one could tell a mile off, Martin, that you were on the job!"

"I rode down on the same car with you, on the fender at the back," Martin responded, chagrined. "How was I to know he'd run into me like that? It's just the luck of the game. Shall I trail him, Mac? Maybe that clerk in the drugstore is a kind of a go-between in whatever business brought him out and he's finished what he came for. He's certainly walking as though he was through in this neighborhood."

"And good reason!" McCarty commented. "However, 'tis no good palavering over. Trail him, Martin, but if he starts uptown on a car or in a taxi he'll be on his way back to the Creveling house with nothing more doing to-night as far as he is concerned, so you come back here. I'm going to see what that clerk knows about him."

The abashed Martin hurried off upon his task and Dennis and McCarty retraced their steps to the drugstore, where the latter purchased three of the most expensive cigars in the case and remarked casually as he lighted one:

"Thought I saw a fellow in here that I know just now as we were passing; tall, thin fellow, dark, with a smooth face—"

"Oh, you mean Mr. Hildreth?" the clerk interrupted pleasantly. "He and his wife live just around the corner and they trade here a lot."

McCarty removed his foot hastily from the agonizing pressure of Dennis' big brogan and nodded.

"That's my friend, all right, but he can't have lived in the neighborhood long. They used to have a flat up on the West Side. Mrs. Hildreth is a mighty fine-looking woman, big and blonde—"

"She's a fine woman every way!" the clerk interrupted again, his tired face lighting up with a smile. "They've only lived around in Lanahan's apartments a little more than a month, but it's easy to tell. She don't come in often herself but she's always got a kind word about the children," he added irrelevantly. "I lost my own wife a year ago."

"Tough luck!" McCarty said sympathetically. "I'll drop in on the Hildreths one of these evenings. Which apartment house is Lanahan's?"

"Fifth from the corner; got a cracked yellow lamp over the vestibule, you can't miss it."

"Thanks. I'll look in on you again when I'm down this way. Good night."

Out on the street once more, McCarty and Dennis made their way to the house indicated without delay and halted in the vestibule while the former scrutinized the cards in the bell plate.

"Here they are. Fourth floor," he observed. "If Mrs. Hildreth is the dame I think she is, she'll not be answering a ring at this time of night."

"There'll be no need, for some one's left the door unlatched." Dennis pushed it open as he spoke. "You can make some excuse to get her to let us in. Come on!"

In silence they mounted the creaking stairs, through an atmosphere redolent of stale cooking, to the fourth floor, and paused before the rear door upon which had been tacked a card bearing the name "F. Hildreth," written in a small, neat hand.

"I guess the front flat is empty, for there's no card up and there was none in that space over the bell downstairs," Dennis whispered. "What are you going to do, Mac? Take a chance and break the door down?"

"Not if I can get in peaceable," McCarty replied in a whisper. "I'm going to be real sick, Dennis. Hold me up!"

Emitting a loud and realistic groan, he leaned limply against his friend with such suddenness that the surprised Dennis was almost borne to the floor, but he recovered himself in time. Another groan welled from McCarty's throat and a third before finally there came the sound of footsteps within, the door was opened cautiously and a woman peered out. She was tall and Junoesque in form with a thick braid of fair hair falling over either shoulder and great, soft, blue eyes darkened now with apprehension and concern. Her loose, dark robe fell in almost classical lines about her and the light of the flaring gas jet in the hall gleamed softly on her creamy throat.

Dennis gasped with astonishment and involuntary admiration at the vision and stepped back while the woman asked with just a trace of an accent:

"What is it? Some one is ill?"

McCarty straightened and his foot reached out to the door sill.

"I want you, Ilsa Helwig—!"

But he was too late. At his first word a sudden change came over her expression. Before his foot could intercept it she had slammed the door in his face and they heard a bolt shoot into its slide.

"We've got to work fast now; down with the door!" McCarty cried and Dennis lunged, using his brawny shoulder as a battering-ram, at the same moment that the sound of a subdued crash came from within. At first the stout bolt resisted their efforts, but finally it snapped with a loud report, precipitating them into a narrow, dimly lighted hallway. Two doors facing them stood open revealing their emptiness at a glance, but a third at the back was closed and they rushed toward it. It was bolted, as the entrance door had been, but its flimsy fastening gave way at the first onslaught and they found themselves in a tiny kitchen. No other door led from it, but its single window was wide open, a fire-escape showing beyond and a row of flowering geraniums lay overturned, their red earthen pots shattered.

At a bound they had crossed the room and craned their necks out into the night. Lights were springing up in one or two of the rear windows across the network of clothes- lines, but no human figure was visible on the fire-escape nor in the yard beneath.

"Well," vouchsafed Dennis after a pause in which an eloquent glance had passed between them. "I hope the next time you tell any one they're wanted you'll have your hands on them first! Martin did not make the only bonehead play, the night!"