Page:Weird Tales v02 n01 (1923-07-08).djvu/75

74 yellow, and there were sagging patches of water-logged flesh under the eyes.

The man in the lighted room paused and looked down at a reading table. Upon it lay a newspaper, which he drew aside. There was a leather-covered box on this table; and after staring gloatingly at it for a few minutes, the colonel opened the box and took out something which he held toward the light.

"Mine!" the watcher could hear him cry. "All mine—and soon I shall be free to do with it as I please!"

"Doc" slid down from the tree, his heart beating suffocatingly. In there, hardly twenty feet from where he was hiding, was a fortune! And one swift stroke now would make him master of it! His mind whirled as indolence and greed fought for mastery. The former counseled him to wait. Greed urged him to strike now, for himself.

"I might be able to get in while that Chink is away!" he meditated. "Those bars—"

He stepped out of the shelter of the bushes and crossed cautiously to the corner of the back wing. A metal basket, evidently designed to hold lawn clippings, stood there. "Doc" picked it up and carried it over under the window. Then he looked around and listened. He knew that he was playing a desperate game.

Then he thought of the mass of shimmering diamonds, and of the easy days in Paris and London they would buy. He would quit America, and live quietly and artistically—

He stepped upon the metal contrivance and stood slowly up. He could still hear Colonel Knight’s restless footsteps.

Inch by inch, he drew nearer the bottom bar, till his fingers rested on it. It was loose! In fact it was too loose! A suspicion shot into the crook's mind: this was some sort of trap!

He leaped to the ground and replaced the basket. A better plan had come to him: he would hide in the basement areaway, and would slip in behind the Chinaman, when the latter returned.

"Doc" had made up his mind now to strike for himself. All the indecisiveness was gone. It was as if a stronger will had taken possession of him, and were driving him on to this hazardous undertaking. But those long years of idle enjoyment—they were worth the effort.

"Doc" slipped along close to the basement wall and approached the steps leading down to the basement door. Here he paused to listen: not a sound, save the distant throaty whistle of a steamer. He made his way down the steps and paused. The idea came to him that the door might be open. He tried the handle.

Next moment he had silently opened the door and was listening. Not a sound—but a strange, musty odor assailed his nostrils. He peered into the room, but the darkness was so thick that it seemed to present a solid black wall. His eyes had not yet adjusted themselves to the change from the upper air.

The thief stepped inside. Instantly the door closed behind him, and when he turned and reached for the handle he made a surprising discovery: there was no handle on this side.

He stood very still, trying to understand. A door without a handle—

In the darkness something was moving, and suddenly there came a sound which brought the hair up on the back of his neck. It was no sound with which he was familiar: it was like a continuous jet of steam, or like sand driven against the bottom of a tin pail.

And that odor was all about him. His eyes were adjusting themselves to the murky darkness, and he stared swiftly about. Nothing—

He had drawn his pistol, and now he took a step forward. A rustling sound reached him, above the sound of that horrible jet of steam. His knees were shaking under him, and he knew that he was on the verge of panic. This trap—that was what it was, he realized with a swift clearing of his mental processes. He had stepped into something prepared for him.

Across the room now he could make out a door, and toward this he rushed. He must get out of here, before that hidden horror revealed itself. Words babbled from his lips; sobbing oaths and prayers, strangely mingled. He was halfway across the room—he would make it—

And then, directly before him, there swung down from the darkness something that looked like a huge, flexible pipe. The hissing sound was in his face. Something struck his throat, and he was gripped by a pair of steel jaws that lifted him clear of the floor.

Before he could cry out, a coil of that round thing that had come at him whipped itself around his neck: another and another, and all that was left of the man who had robbed Madam Celia, Mother of the Friendless, swung like a pendulum between floor and ceiling.

H WING, passing through the basement room half an hour later, paused to regard a curious sight: an amorphous, spineless thing that had once been a man, guarded by a great snake. The python was coiled like a huge ship's cable round the dead robber.

The Chinaman's eyes glowed as he crossed the room and made his way to an apartment on the second floor. Here he seated himself before a desk, and examined a chart pinned to the wall.

Deliberately he drew a cross opposite the name of the dead wolf.

"One left!" said he. "One—and my guest!"

HEN MONTE JEROME followed Ah Wing back from the canal, he looked around cautiously for "Doc."

The latter had disappeared, but Monte stuck grimly on at his post till four o’clock. He had expected to be relieved by Billy and the "Kid" at two, but he heard nothing from them. He began to suspect that his followers had banded together against him.

"If they've pulled anything, they'll be beating it back for the city!" he told himself. "They'll have to catch the six o’clock ferry. Well, maybe I'll be there myself!"

The cold light of the early morning was filtering down over the marshes as he made his way back to the cottage. A light burned in the front room, but otherwise the little house was dark. Monte let himself quietly in and from force of habit hung his cap on the hall tree.

Then he entered the lighted parlor, and a startled oath escaped his lips: Billy the Strangler lay with his wolf's face turned toward the ceiling, his lids drooping, his mouth agape. A pool of blood on the floor told his brief story.

Monte stood for a moment staring down at the dead man. Then he turned and walked hastily along the little passage that led to his own room. Nothing was disturbed here, he discovered.

Suddenly a voice sounded, apparently at his shoulder:

"Ah, Mr. Jerome, we are approaching the final scene in our little drama! Greed and suspicion have done their work. Two of your men have murdered each other—"

With the snarl of a wild beast, Monte turned and dashed from the room, He crossed through the parlor and went bounding up the stairs. At the top he stumbled over something, which next moment he discovered to be the body of the "Kid." The dead gunman was smiling—

Again the voice sounded, this time from the direction of the "Kid's" bedroom.

"Greed, and suspicion, and superstition! I have not had to raise my hand